We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. We're going to be back. It is little after 7pm and parking authority meeting. It is March 18, 2025. It is little after 7 p.m. and we will start with the pledge of allegiance. And if I could ask Kathy Baker if she would come up and lead us please. Congratulations to the fly of the United States of America. To the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And if we could have the clerk, please do the roll. Greetings to roll calls for this meeting. The first one is for City Council. Council member Wells. Here. Council member Cormin. Here. Council member Mirish. Here. Vice Mayor Nazarian. Here. And Mayor Friedman. Here. And the next is for the parking authority. Board member Wells, sorry here. Board member Cormin. There. Board member Mirish. Sure. Vice President Nazarian here and President Friedman. Here. And we are going to do a couple presentations. If I can have my colleagues meet me down in front of the podium there and we will do those to our retiring commissioners. Give the bags a shot. Here's the take as we go on and items are presented to us. And we have three excellent, excellent commissioners who we are going to recognize today. And I'd like to first acknowledge our first departing commissioner, Commissioner Deborah Frank, if she could come up from the Arts and Culture Commission. So thank you so, much for your service. I'm sorry to interrupt your question. I'm sorry to interrupt your question. I'm sorry to interrupt your question. I'm sorry to interrupt your question. I'm sorry to interrupt your question. I'm sorry to interrupt your question. I'm sorry to interrupt your question. I'm sorry to interrupt your question. I'm sorry to interrupt your question. I'm sorry to interrupt your have enabled the city and we were able to bring many different events to the city, such as Sing for Hope, Windows on the Wallis, and also activate empty storefronts. Underneath the umbrella, which we had created for the first time only, which was a combined intercommission collaboration between the Human Relations Commission and Arts and Culture. I truly appreciate the trust you placed in me, and it wouldn't have been possible without the amazing community services department led by Stephanie Harris, and I want to extend my sincere thanks as well to the rest of the team, Patti Akuna, Chris Paulson, Matthew Brown, Brandy Scott, Karina Lesser, Paul Palone, and Laurie Tanner. The last thing I want to say is I'm truly thrilled that the art walk that we created on the commission will be continued. And the city has taken it in their, I guess, their purview to do the entire thing and it will continue on after. So thank you. So again, thank you very much if we can take a quick photo with you. We're going to view... the entire thing and it will continue on after I'm done. So thank you. So again, thank you very much if we can take a quick photo with you. We can view this as departing. And I think we've got one of these kind of teal blue kind of bags that have something in them. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Can we get one picture of something? Yes. Come on, mom. Stand. Stand with it. Here we go. I'm going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to be going to give you a round of applause. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, and now I'd like to acknowledge our second departing commissioner. I'm going to have a little bit of difficulty pronouncing the last name. Is it Ira Friedman? Is that what it is? From the charitable solicitations commission. I, or please come up and join us. And of course, thank you for all your service. I see that you're wearing a bow tie for a change. And if you could say a few words to us, please. As a custom to speaking, first of all, this is the second commission I've served on. And we've lived in Beverly Hills now since 1980. And I thought by serving on a commission, I could give back to the city, what the city is given to myself and my family. And when I say given to us, I mean the fire department, the excellent fire department, the police department, the paramedics, the school, the library. That's the reason we moved here. And if I could help out in any way by being on this commission and then I served with less on the Parking Traffic Commission, it was worthwhile and all the fellow commissioners that I served with, we all had a great time and I think we did a lot of great work and I'm sorry to see that my term is ended but I'm still available for weddings, bar mitzvah, or whatever. Okay, thank you, we're gonna do a picture. We have a picture of the staff. Are you the company? We'll be right here on the left. If you leave it off, don't get too bad. I'm sure. I'll give it a little bit down there. I'm going to get you a little bit down there. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, who are you talking about? Well, you, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She likes it. She's like looking behind her. I know. Why not? Come on, then. And by the way, it's all obviously the same for seven years. Oh, my God. That's right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Nice seeing you, too. Thank you so much. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Good. You didn't forget it. And now a familiar face. This will be now the second time you see her today. I'd like to acknowledge our third departing city commissioner, Kathy Baker from the Health and Safety Commission. Kathy, come back up. So Kathy, if you could just say a few words for us too. We have the plaque. We have the plaque. I'll give you this first so you can do this. And I'll leave this for you. This was quite a ride. I feel I'll give you this first so you can do this. And I'll leave this for you. This was quite a ride. I feel so lucky and privileged to have been able to serve in this position in health and safety. It was a perfect combination of my passion, my experiences in the past, and my love for this city. working listening to prior agencies, our fire department, our police department, our school district, it's such an eye opener. I encourage people to tune in to these meetings and hear what's going on. We as a commission when I was on were asked to research certain issues and make suggestions to city Council. One of them was 5G and a controversial subject around the world. One was our tobacco policy, which I had spent many years involved in prior to this position. One was COVID and I I will say something that sticks out in my mind about COVID and making policy was making the hard decision and recommendation to city council to council Halloween. I don't know why that will stick out but it does in terms of really protecting our community and how important that is. So I just wanna thank all of you who make this community amazing. Our staff, particularly on the Health and Safety Commission. I can't thank you all enough. My fellow commissioners, and I will just say this, we will be friends after this commission is over. We became a family without a shadow of a doubt. So I'm going home with a lot of goodies, but most of all, and especially the relationships that were built. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to give you a hand. Thank you. I'm going to go on. You guys over here. You guys over here. You can go on. Come in. Yeah. One. One. See? Hey, G. Hey, G. Hey, G. I'm talking to you here. I'm going to go on. I'm going to go on. I'm going to go on. Three, one. Can I go over there? Three, one. Okay. Everybody? That's great. One, two, three. Turn in. And that's good. And we got it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. How are you? I see you. I'm just how we know that. I don't feel it, doesn't I? I'm going to see you. I'm going to see you. How are we going to have that online session? How do we go? We can go. We can go back and take a decision. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. We have one more thing. I'm sorry. Yeah, one more. One more. Yep. Let's go. And microphone again. Okay. So that was our presentations. We have one more. And this evening, we would like to recognize the beautiful celebration, which is now Ruse, a very special time of the year that marks the traditional beginning of spring and the start of the Persian New Year. Now Ruse is a universal celebration of new beginnings and future prosperity that encourages friendship, peace, and unity within families and communities. In Beverly Hills, Nauru's also provides a festive occasion to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of our Persian community. Here in the city, we have already begun celebrating this special holiday. Around the city, we have 97 Arruz banners with artwork courtesy of the Far Hang Foundation, proudly displayed to acknowledge the outstanding contributions of our Iranian community. We put up our first Nauru's table at the Beverly Hills Farmers Market last Sunday March 9th and beginning today we have set up another now Roo's table here at City Hall on the first floor that will be on display Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. till 5 30 p.m. until March 31st. Our Beverly Hills Library and Roxbury Park Community Center also have their own special naruze table for the community to experience on display until Saturday, March 22nd. On April 1st, which is the last day of naruze, and also the installation of our new mayor, we have this display table at the Wallace-Annenberg Center for the performing arts for our installation event. We also hope they will be able to enjoy celebrating and stop by one of these magnificent displays. Now I'd like to welcome, oh my goodness. Any Vreza? Are Chani. Executive Director of the Far Hang Foundation to say a few words before we present a proclamation honoring March 20th, 2025 as now Rooz Day of Beverly Hills for your commitment in recognizing and celebrating no rules. As an Iranian-American, it means so much to me to just drive through Beverly Hills and see the beautiful banners flying proudly. And no rules is a celebration that everyone can celebrate. It's a celebration of the first day of spring and the rebirth of Mother Nature. So we welcome everyone in joining the celebration. Yes, it's a completely non-religious and has no religious connotations so everyone can participate in this celebration. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So thank you. Thank you for your dedication to our community and spreading awareness about this special holiday. On behalf of myself and the city council, we wish everyone in our Persian community a happy and healthy new year. So let's take a picture. Yeah. Thank you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. The text-bh text message is on any cityrelated topic may be sent to 310-596-4265. City staff will acknowledge receipt of the text message within one business day, however resolution of issues may take longer. If you would like to receive updated text alerts from the Beverly Hills Police Department, please text BHPD288877. Textal words will keep you informed of police activity within the city. If anyone wants, now is the time for oral communications. If anyone wants to call in, the phone number is 310-288-2288. We have many oral communications today and as a result of that and because of the fact that we do have a full regular agenda who also have speakers. We're going to limit public comment to two minutes. So I would ask everybody, please, to respect the two minute limitations so that we can get all of the speakers in before we start our regular meeting. So the first speaker card I have is Lewis Hall. Go ahead Mr. Armstrong. Thank you Mayor Friedman, Vice Mayor Nazarian, and Council members, Mayor Corman and Wells, for hearing me and more importantly for serving our city. Not very many people understand and appreciate the personal sacrifices all of you make by sitting up here. So I would like to share just some miscellaneous thoughts and ideas, I'm gonna just read them real quickly. I feel a little guilty by taking your time actually. I understand the struggle you're having with this state and those wanting to develop massive apartment buildings in our city. You might make an effort to visit Sacramento and our state representatives to inform them of the issues here and that you're working to meet state's needs and why it's important to preserve our city's graceful image. You might look at how Charleston, South Carolina has successfully maintained the elegance of their city with their classic apartment buildings. We have some beautiful vintage apartments here that some of landlords are neglecting with the hope of tearing them down to build larger, more profitable buildings, but this will diminish the unique style of our city. Please pay attention if you can to the west southwest part of our city. That's where I live in the location of the high school. Our speed on Durant, Lasky, and Ball Spalding, and many cars are straight piping, meaning that their exhaust systems have been modified to produce loud popping noises. Radar speed signs don't work. The only solution I can suggest are speed bumps and more police presence, for example. One day when it was unusually quiet, I walked around the block and I found a police car parked on both Spalding and Lasky. Police presence does help. And finally, on May 24th, Golda Berkman is performing in the Beverly Cannon Gardens. She is an amazing soprano, grew up in Beverly Hills, graduated from Beverly High, and performed in the city's Centennial celebration at the Saban Theater. Will you put on your next agenda approval to make this a city event, so her father, who is the owner of Earth Cafe, can publicly promote this free community performance on street poll banners. He will pay for all expenses expenses and that's it. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much. Next speaker card I have is Barbara. Is it Rosen? Barbara Rosen? I'm here to talk to you about a parking problem that has been going on in my street for quite some time. I live on Bedford Drive between Wilshire and Charlizeville. It's a permit parking street. We used to have placards in our cars to identify that we belong there and now we don't. And since that happened, my street is overrun with cars that don't belong there out of state plates, tourists, shoppers, so much so that I can, me and my family cannot find a spot to park on our street and we have to pay for our permit to park on that street and I can't park on the street. There is never or next to never any parking enforcement done. I never see anybody getting a ticket. I never see they're just not there. And the last week I was pulling up, there was not one spot on my block. I had my granddaughter. She was crying. I needed to get into the house. This one guy with an Arizona plate, with all his shopping bags from SACS, just was pulled up in front of my house. And that was it, I cannot park on my street anymore because it's overrun. I don't know why the street does not get ticketed, but these out of state plates, you would think that you could get the revenue from these tickets, but there's nobody. And something has to be done because why am I paying $200 a year for a permit and I cannot get a spot on my street? It's not right. And I wish something could be done about it. I don't know what the answer is. Okay, and you gave the names of the streets. For drive between Wilshire and Charlayville. Okay, okay. We will follow up on that and thank you very much for your comment. Thank you. Okay. Next speaker card I have is Steve Mayer. Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council members, thank you very much for allowing me to make this public comment. First, I wish to thank you, thank Nusham Scotty for all of her efforts throughout the new laws and also thanking the council in supporting her efforts of making this an important element. I am a member of the Oakhurst neighborhood group, and we have a number of concerns that we wish to put forward to you. The first is a property at 350 North Oakhurst, which is undergoing a massive remodel. What you see in front of you on the first slide, which is the extension over the south side setback, is they've created a patio into the setback, but it has not been approved. As you can see by the wall, it is right next to the carport. I can't imagine that the firemen who actually have to work on these things would accept something like this. The second slide is of the north side. And again, they've extended it to the property line. And again, this had no approval from the Planning Commission. They did not request variances, I'm not exactly certain why. I also wanted to alert you to other things in the Ocurs Terria. You'll soon be having a Builders Remedity Project coming to you at 401 North Oakhurst, which is a 13 story project with no parking. You'll also be hearing an appeal on 412 North Oakhurst, which is a bonus density project. And that project is completely out of context to the neighborhood. Two other things if I can bear with and real quickly, though, Steve. Okay, please. The marathon, there's a problem in the Oakhurst area, despite direction from council before. Hundreds of cars just go in circles. It is directed to be taken care of. And the last thing is the last slide is The detour map for Metro What's happening is is again they did not put up the signage so writers are having to be just pass by This and it was addressed at the traffic and parking commission, but it still is a new problem. Thank you Okay, thank you you very much. Next speaker card I have is a machine Mishikati. She left so we will and Mishikati is the one who brought the wonderful table, a dosing table, both downstairs and around our community. So make if you get an opportunity to see that. Okay, before we go on to the next speaker, the City Council has received multiple public comments related to the DuPont Clinic. I would like to make the following statement regarding this matter. The DuPont Clinic is a women's health clinic that desire to enter the California practice area and locate in Beverly Hills. They leased a location but subsequently the lease was rescinded by its landlord in 2023. DuPont Clinic chose to sue the city for allegedly pressuring the landlord to rescind the lease. The California Attorney General's Office filed allegations against the city. The city denied the allegations and continues to deny the claims made by the Attorney General's Office. fall the City of Beverly Hills and the Attorney General's Office. Last fall, the City of Beverly Hills and the Attorney General's Office entered into a stipulated judgment which contained no admission or finding of any wrongdoing by the city. The city was not subject to any fines or penalties. The allegations by the Attorney General were just that, allegations that were never tested in a court of law. Rather, an agreement was entered into, wherein the city agreed to and has developed a training module for select employee ease and elected officials regarding compliance with state and federal reproductive health care law. Last December, a Los Angeles County judge after reviewing the evidence presented by way of pleadings and argument, which were presented by the city and DuPont, upheld the city's motion to dismiss the vast majority of Dupont clinic's claims. Dupont has recently appealed the ruling and the case is currently pending before the Court of Appeal. It would be in the best interest of both parties to settle the case, but in order to do so, each party needs to be reasonable. The city participated in the mediation and discussions have continued since, but a settlement has not been reached. Any claim that the city desires to financially harm DuPont is groundless and simply not true. Even though the city did not terminate the lease or pressure the landlord to terminate the lease, we still continue to participate in good faith settlement negotiations. My colleagues and I have repeatedly stated and and continue to believe in a woman's right to choose. The legal issues presented in the Dupont matter do not alter that position. We continue to seek a fair and reasonable resolution of the issues with the Dupont Clinic representatives and the landlord. With that, I will go to oral communications, starting with gay abrums. Since we're a lot of two minutes, our... Yeah, because we're reading the petition and it was longer than the two minutes, so we're sharing. Anyway. My biggest dilemma is after having cataract surgery, whether or not to wear my glasses, I think I'm gonna go with the glasses. Oh, yeah. Don't do that. Can we go back to two minutes? Thank you. OK. I was going to do that. Thank you. If you could let me run the meeting, can we please have two minutes back on the clock? Thank you. Ready? Good evening. And thank you for the opportunity to speak. We are here representing Beverly Hills for Choice and the 640 women and men who have signed this petition and counting. We are urging and imploring you to settle fairly with Dupont Clinic. Do not help put this critically needed full term reproductive health care provider out of business. The pont was the victim of a well-coordinated assault on their legal right to open in Beverly Hills by the repulsively named survivors of the abortion Holocaust. This radical out-of-town group works to undermine the law by threatening institutions with disruption and aggressive protest. In Newport Beach Orange County, they targeted a doctor demonstrating at his home disrupting the neighborhood. The Newport Beach City Council responded by passing in an ordinance restricting protests within 300 feet of a residence. These terrorists tested the city's resolve, but Newport Beach held firm. Eventually, the out of town agitators left. When Dupont Clinic chose to locate in Beverly Hills because we proudly proclaimed ourselves a city that supports a woman's right to choose, Dupont believed the city council would welcome them. Unfortunately, that city council did not support their own words. When survivors of the abortion Holocaust rolled into town to stop Dupont, members of the council met with these terrorists and gave them what they demanded to get them to leave the city. Unlike Newport Beach, they did not protect legal health care providers. The outcome, Dupont lost its lease and is out of all the money spent to build its facility. Yep, two minutes. State Attorney General Rob Bonta investigated what happened. He concluded the city interfered, stating Beverly Hills officials have taken actions reminiscent of those in extremist red states by illegally interfering with and ultimately preventing a new reproductive health care clinic from opening. But the city filed an anti-slap motion in response to Dupont suit to recover damages. It did succeed in court. Instead of just taking its legal victory, the city has declared it will attempt to collect the court awarded fees further jeopardizing the clinic's future. Please do not help give radical forces who would take reproductive health care backwards. The victory they want putting Dupont out of business. Please settle this fairly. Remember, Dupont was the victim. People who need reproductive health care that this clinic offers will be victims to. Do not be the tool of extremists. Do not let this be your legacy. And yes, there are many names on this petition who don't live in Beverly Hills, but neither do members of the survivors of the abortion Holocaust. Yet former and current members of this council met with them, gave them permits and worked to achieve the goal of this radical organization shutting down Dupont Clinic. So clearly, residency is not a consideration. Do the right thing. Take the legal victory and leave Dupont alone. Write the wrongs that Mayor Julian Gold and last year's City Council set in motion. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker I have is Elissa Rossden. Good evening and thank you for your time and your service. This is a pivotal pivotal moment for the City Council, an opportunity to make a meaningful positive impact. Rather than continuing to pursue DuPont Clinic for exorbitant legal fees, I urge you to show grace and allow them to move forward. The money you seek from them could instead be used to fund services that save women's lives. This is the issue at hand. Please do not align Beverly Hills with anti-abortion radicals. Demonstrate through your actions and not just words that you support the legal right to reproductive health care and the people who provide it. Inflictoring further financial hardship on Duke Pont clinic, harms women who rely on its critical services, especially when few other options exist. Please do not add to their burden. I must reiterate that their work helps women and saves lives. Be magnanimous. Reach a fair and favorable settlement with DuPont. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker is Karen Marin. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you. I'm in our end and I have worked in reproductive health care since 2007. I'm a former member of the Planned Parenthood Board. And I, in 2021, I was co-founder of the LA Guild for Reproductive Health, a nonprofit group dedicated to raising funds to support reproductive health, where almost 200 strong. And since our inception, we've given away $400,000 to help to ensure that women and families have access to reproductive health care, no matter where they live. Because as residents of California, Los Angeles, and Beverly Hills, we thought we didn't have to worry about our reproductive freedom, and we wanted to do all we could to make sure that other Americans have what we have. Imagine the shock to learn that Beverly Hills City Council decision about DuPont Clinic and how they caved to the demands of the handful of anti-borsion terrorists, how DuPont Clinic was wronged and unable to open here in Beverly Hills. As a woman who needed specialized reproductive health care surgery after a fetal demise, I know how important to have these clinics and skilled physicians available and operating with their high level expertise right here in Beverly Hills. Now it's time to write this wrong and not push this matter any further. Drop the pursuit of the legal fees. Next speaker I have is Kim Bader. My name is Dr. Kim Bader. I'm a professor emeritus at USC School of Medicine Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Excuse me. I am also a board member of the Los Angeles Guild for reproductive health. And what you're going to hear from me is a lot of frustration and anger, reiterating what other people have said, but I think it's important to do so. I might look familiar to some of you because I've presented these arguments previously at your meetings. Clearly what I said and what others said really just must have fallen on deaf ears. This council to me was intimidated and bullied by outside groups into not allowing the women of Beverly Hills to have a clinic where they could have reproductive choice. I was quoted at the time in the LA Times saying if it can happen in Beverly Hills, it can happen everywhere. And that is an absolute true statement. Shame on you to do this. And to make it really more egregious to me is trying to put them at a business with the silly lawsuit. I think again, shame on you again. Our attorney general has been doing everything he can to protect the women of California from outside actors like this group. They are trying to allow women to have access across this state and to bring in women from other states who need reproductive health care where they can't get it otherwise and Understand that this is just the beginning these groups will not stop with Beverly Hills This is a battle that we're gonna have to fight all over this state and all over this. Mark my words, but understand there are women and men in this room who have the courage to stand up and say this is not right. And women and men should have reproductive choice and complete control over their own bodies. We are not going back to the 1950s with death and illegal botched abortions. We are willing to stand up and fight for that right. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next speaker card I have is Bee Getchis. Hello, I'm a junior at Immaculate Heart High School. I have heard you all say that you support a woman's right to choose. And while, yes, women need your vocal support, women also need you guys to act on your words. Women, I don't know if I need to remind you all, but you all came from a woman. And the fact that you were all, it breaks my heart truly. And I need, right, I need my access to things like this in Los Angeles. This is a city that we have been promised that is supposed to be one of the woke ones and we're supposed to be safe here. And like all of these strong women have said previously that if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. And women come here seeking asylum from states that were they're not safe. And it's just outrageous that it's happening in a city that has been built off of values that are supposed to be progressive. And I just think that it is very cowardly of you to say yes, we support a woman's right to choose but when it comes to a sacrifice you have to make whether maybe you lose money, maybe you lose support from a higher government official, that's not who you work for, you guys work for us, for the people. This is a democracy and I think that it is very disgraceful if you just succumb to the tyrannical powers that are taking over our government and our country and it's very scary and as a young woman I hope to have all of you, my council people or whatever in my corner and to support me and that I don't see that right now is breaking my heart and making me really sad and yeah. Thank you. Next week with part I have is from Fannie Freeland. Hello, I'm Fannie Freeland. I'm 15 years old. I also attend a Macat heart in Hollywood. I'm just here to say that with the legal case that you are putting against DuBont Clinic, every single day that you are pursuing this case, it could be another young woman whose life could be torn apart from you guys keeping this legal case up and from stopping DuBont Clinic from getting to do their work that saves many lives, many careers and many people's educations. And by you pursuing the single case, it is really disrupting a lot of people. I would just like you to think about what you're doing and how many people's lives you are affecting. How many young women's life you are affecting? How many people like me you are affecting? How do people I know you're affecting and to just really look around and realize what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, a card I have is from Marissa Levin. I know. I may be pronouncing the last name incorrectly. Marissa looks like Levin. Okay, I'm sorry. It's okay, probably didn't say it loud enough. Thank you for your time and your service. You guys have to settle with them fairly. It's getting rid of the anti-slap motion. The whole thing what you guys are doing is so wrong, the financial impact of it, of the mess that's been created will deeply affect due responsibility to provide their services which appears to be your goal, which is really unfortunate because that's not what your job is. And if you just think about the fact that this will be your legacy, M on walls and statues in the park are not gonna be your legacy. When future members, statistically, future members of your families or council women, you up there are gonna need reproductive healthcare. And the fact that you're getting in the way of it, that is what people are going to remember. So just think about that when you think about your wives and your daughters and your nieces. Why you guys are trying to obstruct this is baffling and it's shameful and you should just settle with them. Thank you. Next speaker part I have is Helen Eigenberg. Hi I'm Helen Eigenberg thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. So California is one of the few remaining states where abortion is not only legal but it's enshrined in our constitution. You let our state down by your actions to let the Dupont clinic be shut down. Attorney General Bonta said Beverly Hill officials have taken actions reminiscent of those in extremist red states extremist red states by illegally interfering and ultimately preventing a new reproductive health care clinic from opening. You have let down LA County and your city. You filed an anti-slap motion in response to Depont's suit to recover damages. You have created even more financial jeopardy for the Depont clinic. It's time for all of you to step up and settle this financial damage, damage that your former council member all played a part in, and fairly settle with Dupont Clinic. Otherwise, your city council legacy will be to have given the survivors of the abortion Holocaust. Remember that name. That is your legacy. The victory that they always wanted, putting DuPont out of business. Please reconsider this and do the right thing. People's lives depend on it. Thank you. Next speaker card I have is Leo Zananovski. And I only have one other in-person speaker card. If anybody else has one, if they could bring it up to the clerk. We do have some electronic comments I think after this stuff. Good evening, thank you for your time. I'm proud to live in Beverly Hills. It's a place of shared community values. So my disappointment and dismay when then Mayor Julian Gold collaborated with the survivors of the abortion hall cost to prevent DuPont Clinic from opening is profound. His cowardice undermined the law, damaged the credibility of our police department, and shook people's faith in the motives of the City Council. It is shocking the Newport Beach, the beating heart of Orange County, stood up to these bullies and terrorists. They didn't use their authority to pressure the doctor, being attacked, they used the law to protect the doctor. It is outrageous that Beverly Hills is more aligned with anti-abortion forces than Newport Beach. Furthermore, as a Jewish man, it is offensive that a group of extremists out of touch with our values uses the word Holocaust to describe abortion. This is where you, the current City Council, finds yourselves. But the good news is that redemption comes with acts of goodness. Please take your legal victory and leave Dupont Clinic alone. Recovering legal fees on top of being out over a million dollars invested in renovations will cause Dupont Clinic extreme financial distress. So I call that you do not continue to push the survivors of the abortion hall cost agenda, which is denying women the right to choose a right that's enshrined in our state's constitution. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, card I have is Jen Freeland. Hi, I'm Jen for Freeland. I came from Pasadena. I'm going to be honest. Listening to all of you speak and handing out those awards, it sounds like a wonderful place to live. The Tiffany bags, the whole spiel you did. But truly, you're not telling the truth. And your whole paragraph that you read to us is kind of the way we're doing politics now, like a switch of bait. But we came here because we know what happened. And if you're so, you put the pink lights on in Beverly Hills, I heard because you support women. How are we even here? What is even going on? If you support women, you'd be helping them find another lease right here in Beverly Hills. This is a whole mockery. I'm looking at all of your last names. You all know what bullying is like. I'm going to guess. Because each and every one of you has a name that out here in the world, we know what bullying is. My last name is Levy. I know what bullying is. How dare you vote against women's health? I come from New York City. I was sexually abused when I was 15 years old and got pregnant. I have, thank God, I had to cross a picket line to get an abortion. Imagine that my young kids right here have to have this argument with you educated, voted in, members of society. How dare you? And how dare you side with abortion holocaust people? I mean, it's absurd, you couldn't write it. Shame on you all. I draw the long way to be here. I'm so glad to look at each one of you in the eye and say shame on all of you. The whole thing. Just shame on you. You have the money for the Tiffany Bats. Use some money and support DuPont. Help healthy women. The last speaker card I have is Clayton Becker. The last time I was here, it was because the city was preparing to violate state housing law, right after the Department of Housing and Community Development warned them that you were about to violate state housing law. Today I have had to sit in the gallery and listen to each and every one of you, profess over and over, that you're not against abortion rights. You're not against a woman's right to choose. You'll unanimously declare your support for a woman's right to choose. You'll loudly say that you support a woman's right to choose right up until the point where you actually have to defend that right. Because when the DuPont Clinic was set to open, the city of Beverly Hills did just about everything in their power to stop it from opening. The city attorney asked city staff to delay permits. Before anti-abortion advocates came to speak at this forum, you counsel a miniserie and asked the city manager how these permits got through in the first place. To which the city manager replied, and we know this because we have your emails. Don't try to deny it. Don't stand up there and shake your head. We heard it. We saw it in your emails. And the city manager replied, well, there's nothing in our code that prevents this. What followed was day after day, week after week, month after month of the city trying to stop this from happening. For a mayor gold, along with the city manager and police chief, met with the owner of the building, pressuring them and intimidating them by saying that the clinic would become a lightning rod for the city. Saying that, actually, we might face bomb threats. Despite the fact you had no evidence of such threats at the time. Specifically, Councilmember Gold wrote, at the time, I don't mind turning up the heat a little bit. Who wouldn't feel pressured to cancel a lease under such circumstances? Indeed, the landlord cited the letter that you drafted, but never sent when he chose to cancel the lease. Because again, you'll profess your willingness to defend reproductive freedom right up until you actually have to defend it. The second that anti-abortion extremists began to show their faces, you saw that they were here and you said we're not going to do anything to defend abortion rights. The purpose of a system is what it does. Your time's up, thank you. Okay, fine, fine, fine. The purpose of a system is what it does. And so far it seems like what you seem to be doing is a hell of a lot of not actually defending the rights you profess to support. Is there anyone else in chambers who would like to make public comment? If not, we will go to any electronic means of comments please. We have a couple on Zoom. This caller is Judy Sitzer. Judy Sitzer. We could come back to her. Okay. Okay. Next we have is Jordan's sale. It looks like Jordan may have logged off as well. And we had Joanna's spiker. But looks like she is Joanna Spiker there? Philker. Philker? Sorry. And then we have Divergenne Gaines. I'm so sorry. That's okay. It's Duber, Duber and Gay. Please go ahead. Thank'm so sorry. That's okay. It's duvern. Duvern gain. Please go ahead. Thank you so much. My name's Duvern Gaines and I direct the National Clinic Access Project for the Feminist Majority Foundation, a nonprofit that's been based in Beverly Hills thanks to the kind largest of peggioorcan a lion for women's rights since 2001. And I'm here again to echo the incredibly just incredible statements of my colleagues and the supporters in the room. I think, me thinks the city doff protests too much. I really think that's the case. And I really appreciate being read the city's account, which probably exceeded well over two minutes and being limited to two minutes, and order per speaker in order to challenge the city's repeated version and denials of having done anything wrong. The attorney general doesn't just investigate cities on a whim and your stipulated judgment obviously had something to do with your bad acts. Otherwise there would have been no complaint filed and there would have been no stipulated judgment agreed to. You know what the right thing is and it's not filing for $450,000 worth of bogus legal fees that you supposedly incurred. $450,000 that a clinic needs to open somewhere else, not in Beverly Hills, where it tried to open with a legally binding lease that unfortunately you pressured a landlord out of actually honoring. I do think I hope that you do the right thing until you do we'll be back. Thank you. Well, we could go back to the last two again just to ask Jordan sale Joanna spilker Looks like they've logged off. Okay, so do we have any Any other comments? Yes, we received a ton of written comments in the past few days We've received approximately 50 written comments a little over 50 actually because they're still coming in and They were they came through a variety of different email boxes just to be clear and we're hoping that we've captured all of them The comments have have been received by the City Council and due to the large volume at the Mayor's request, the summarization will be provided. The original comments will be saved as part of the official record and will be available online after the meeting tomorrow. Summary of the comments are the following. Request were made of the City Council to not seek reimbursement of legal fees from DuPont Clinic. They would like the clinic to open in Beverly Hills and have the city support the opening of an on-site clinic. They have asked the city to support women's health and reproductive rights. Writers have also spoken against anti-abortion extremists. There was a reference made to the city's previous support and proclamation and support of reproductive freedoms. The ability to provide reproductive health care needs to women is critical at this time. Many wrote that. And they have asked that the city do the right thing. Additionally, the writers wrote Beverly Hills must do better, not just for the women who rely on access to safe reproductive health care, but for the long term health and vitality of the city itself. You need to make this right. At a minimum, please do not collect the slap judgment. And the restore faith in governance resolve this situation fairly with DuPont Clinic. Additionally, Beverly Hills has supported reproductive freedom, so they have asked why does the city refuse to support and protect upon clinics right to operate in Beverly Hills, pursuing the legal fees from the department will crush it financially. And if the city sincerely supports reproductive freedom and reproductive health care, the city council must allow its convictions, must follow its convictions with actions. The actions taken so far by the City Council do not align with the convictions of Beverly Hills, where I'm proud to have grown up. And they've also asked that the City Council's to settle with DuPont Clinic and send a message that Beverly Hills does not cave to extremists Approximately 40% of California counties have no abortion clinic and therefore it's Unconsumable that the Beverly Hills City Council would collude according to the writers to prevent one from opening in Los Angeles County And that pretty much concludes public comment again. They will all be saved in their entirety Online and will be part of the official record That concludes public comment. Again, they will all be saved in their entirety online and will be part of the official record. That concludes public comment. Okay, so if we have no further public comment on non-agentized items, we will close public comment on those items and move to our regular calendar starting with the parking authority consent calendar. If we could ask council member Wells if she could read that item, please. Thank you, Mayor. I move the adoption of the consent agenda as follows. Number one, consideration by the parking authority of the minutes of the meeting of February 5th, 2025. Second. And we could have the one. second was from Vice Mayor Nazarian. Correct. So that we keep that record. Roll call is Director Wells. Yes. Director Cormin. Yes. Director Mirish. Yes. Vice Chair Nazarian. Yes. Chair Friedman. Yes. Okay. Going to our city council consent calendar. We're going to be able to do it. We're going to be able to do it. We're going to be able to do it. We're going to be able to do it. We're going to be able to do it. We're going to be able to do it. We're going to be able to do it. We're going to be able to do it. We're going to be able to do it. We're going to be city council consent calendar. 410, please. We're pulling number 310 and 11 and we'll do those at the end. And if we could have Council Member, any other polls, by the way? Three? Yes. 3, 10 and 11. If we have Council Member Korman, our read number is one through nine. And Councilmember Mirish 12 through 17. I move the adoption of the consent agenda as follows. 1. Consideration by the City Council of the Minutes of the Special Studies Session meeting of February 5, 2025. 2. Consideration by the City Council of the Minutes of the adjourned regular meeting of February 5, 2025. Number four, demands paid. Review of budget demands paid, covering dates February 25, 2025 to March 10, 2025. Number five, payroll disbursement report, covering dates February 25, 2025 to March 10, 2025. Approval of number six, traffic and part and commission appointment, Shabnam, Shelley, Azizi. Number seven, representation for the city of Beverly Hills of the Southern California Association of Government's regional conference and general assembly on May 1 and 1 and 2nd, 2025. Number eight, request for the City Council to consider a free use day for the installation of mayor and vice-mayors on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 at the Walls Annabberg Center for the Performing Arts. And number 9, an agreement with flock group in DBA flock safety. For installation, configuration, and lease of automated license plate recognition cameras and related services and Approval of a corresponding purchase order in the not to exceed amount of $380,000 annually for the installation Configuration and lease of automated license plate recognition cameras and related services 12 amendment number one to the agreement with civic solutions ink to provide as needed professional planning services and approval of a change purchase order to Civic Solutions Inc for a total not to exceed amount of $299,950 and approval of a one-time general fund appropriation of $200,000 to pay for these professional services. 13. a purchase order to National Auto Fleet Group for a total not-to-excite amount of $953,732.5 for the purchase of nine police department vehicles and eight public works department vehicles. 14, a award of a contract to the lowest responsible bidder Southwest Pipeline and Trenchless Corp for sewer, Maine, and manhole repair and rehabilitation in the amount of $8,164,350 and approval of the plans and specifications, therefore with respect to design criteria and approval of a purchase order in the not-to-excite amount of $8,980,785 to Southwest Pipeline and Trenchless Corp for the project which includes a contingency of $816,435 and pursuant to the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act. Sequa City Council will also consider finding the project exempt from further review under Secret 15 award of a contract to AC Pros Inc. For the fire station number three, HVAC upgrades project, and approval of a corresponding purchase order in the not-to-excite amount of $323,564, and approval of prions and specifications, therefore, with respect to design criteria and pursuant to the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA, City Council will also consider finding the project exempt from further review under CEQA. 16, award of a contract to AC ProZinc for the Fire Station number one ventilation upgrades project, an approval of a corresponding purchase order in the not-to-excite amount of $343,5207 and approval of plans and specifications therefore with respect to design criteria and pursuant to the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA, City Council will also consider finding the project exempt from further review under CEQA. 17 acceptance of the contract work for a civic center parking garage improvements for secure vehicle parking project with Weissman construction in the final amount of $788,468.57, an authorization of city clerk to record notice of completion. B, Shell and Core improvements project at 430 North Camden Dry Project with Belford Bady Construction LLC in the final amount of $3,210,579 and 12 cents, an authorization of City Clerk to record notice of completion. And before we have a second, is there any public comment on any of these items? Not seeing any other items'll second it. We have the roll. Councillor Member Wells. Yes. Councillor Member Coramann. Councillor Member Mirish. Vice Mayor Nazarian. Easy for you to say yes. Okay. So we have three polls on number 310 310 and 11 if there's anyone who has public comment on these items in chambers or telephonically or electronically now would be the time not seeing any we will go to number 3 and I'll read that one consideration by the City Council of the minutes of the special meeting of February February 7th, 2025. Do we have a second? Second. And we have the rule. Council Member Wells, I'm staying. Council Member Corman. Yes. Council Member Mirish. Yes. Vice Mayor Nazarian. Yes. And Mayor Friedman. Yes. And before we do number 10, I'd like to do number 11. I believe we have some comments and a correction. Mayor Friedman, so this item is the approval of an agreement between the City of Beverly Hills and TV Pro Gear Inc for television production system improvements. So attached to your report is the agreement, the proposed agreement between the city and this consultant on Exhibit B, which is page 32 of your report. There is a discrepancy. It indicates that the city shall compensate city consultant for the satisfactory performance of the work described in this agreement in an amount not to exceed. It should say 1,751 dollars. It says the numbers say that, but when it's spelled out as words, it's a different number. The correct number is $1,766,051. So we wanted to make that change at this time. Okay, so I will read that any questions on that item. Okay, so I'll read that one. An agreement with TV Pro Gear Inc Incorporated for Television Production System, Improvements and Approval of a Corresponding Purchase Order in the Not to Exceed Amount of $1,766,000 and $51. Second. As amended. As amended. As amended. As amended. Second. Council Member Wells Wells yes, council member Korman. Yes, council member Mirish. Yes vice-mariner's area. Yes in mayor Friedman. Yes Okay going to number ten An agreement with west coast arborists incorporated for annual tree maintenance services within city limits and approval of corresponding purchase orders for tree services for fiscal year 2024-25 in the not-to-excit amount of $700,000 and this was pulled by both councilmember Wells and vice mayor Nazarian and if we can have a report or we just have questions. I appreciate if you give me the time for a report because I think we could give you a little bit more information and then we're happy to answer questions. Please. Our Mayor, City Council, I'm Shawna Epstein Director of Public Works and I have with me today Ken Fallsrap who's managed the WCA contract for a number of years and Roberts, the Hagen who managed the RFP process for this contract. So our typical services for tree maintenance is not just trimming as you can see on this large list but we remove and grind up to 350 stumps. We supply up to 350 new trees, watering those new trees for over a year. And responding, and this is probably one of the most important parts of what this contract is, able to respond to emergency tree incidents and ranging from small limb failures to large trees falling, my favorite is one fell on top of our water truck, where we were fixing a water main, and it fell across the whole side of the street and hit the house that was far, far away. And when the tree was removed, the car drove off. So that tells you how great our fleet is. So the historical context of this is we requested originally in 2011 a request for proposals, and that's how we got WCA renewed. And then we did it again in 2019. And then in 2024 we posted an RFP on planet bids. And this is really what we consider in this RFP. What the complexity, the technical expertise requirements included knowledge of tree health, species specific care, disease management, proper pruning techniques, risk management. We are constantly in need of this firm working with us with risk management when there's different liability concerns. Environmental considerations, the ecosystem health, climate resilience, sustainability goals, all things that we're always trying to work through. On our value beyond price, it's the quality of service. This is how can we, and how do we assess that with equipment quality and different response times. from health of the trees is really how do we know proper pruning disease management, those kinds of components that may attribute to higher costs. And then innovation and methods, so different really keeping up with the changing knowledge and technology out there. Operational factors, the staff is able to scale up and scale down as we need them. And reporting communication, having a well-documented minted system that we can also integrate with our asset management system. And certification qualifications, we require ISA certified arborists and other different qualifications so that we can know that we're working with professionals. Trey inventory management. This is something we're proud of with our 27,000 trees of looking through and utilizing it updating the databases as well as many other components of that. Community relations, this is someone who can work with the community, helping us with notifications, and then best value assessment price quality experience and methodology. So we had five contractors that submitted proposals. Only two were completely responsive. And so those two were interviewed. That would be WCA and great Scott. The panel really looked at emergency response readiness, corporate capacity, technical capabilities, customer service protocols, and tree maintenance. They were interviewed by four people and it was clear there was one candidate that was really instilled confidence in the panel. WCA, this is their current contract of about 2.2 million. Their new proposal is about 3.5 million. And when I talk about their proposal, basically what we do is we look at the number of services that we think we'll use and we kind of come up with that scope. So we can scale it up or scale it down. It just depends how much we'd like to get done in a year or a plant. And GSTS, as proposal is 2.8. So WCA was 60% over their original contract, what we have now. GSTS is 30% over our current contract and there are 23% below WCA, have a perspective of those. Some of the reasons cited rising labor costs, inflation, enhanced regulatory requirements increased demand for tree maintenance services throughout the region. So why are we recommending WCA, the ability to meet service and performance requirements? This is really someone that we've worked with for a number of years, and we know that they perform. And we are expected to have a high level of service in this community. It's a full service, comprehensive organization. They've brought a diversified amount of professionals to the interview, nine people, so that we know that there's enough capacity to serve all the different needs that we have. They've a dedicated customer service team. They're a mile from the city, so they don't have to mobilize from far away, the other competitors coming from Orange County. And that really impacts emergency response time. And they have extensive municipal experience, most of their clients, if not all, are municipal. So tonight we're asking that our recommendation is to award the contract with WCA alternatives are to only award the contract for three years, major difference between WCA and the other provosts or was CPI adjustments, WCA serpents, CPI adjustments in year three. Award the contract to WCA at our current funding levels. We would make sure that our work plan would include pines and palms, and we would focus on those, but maybe some other things would not happen as frequently. Or award the contract to GSTS who was not highly recommended by the selection committee. Or reject all proposals and reissue, but we don't think you're gonna get any necessarily lower costs. So So with that, thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions. So are the gentlemen behind me. Okay, I have a question. I'm going to take part, privilege of doing, asking my question first. Do you know the gross value of the trees that we have in the city of Beverly Hills? And I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I sit on the insurance liaison, and I know it's a high number, and if you could tell us what that is. I knew it at one point, but maybe the gentleman behind me know it. 100 million, no one hurt that. And obviously WCA of course in conjunction with city staff is responsible for maintaining that that $100 million asset that we ensure. Yes. Okay. Okay. I just wanted to get that out there and I'll go to Council Member Wells and then Vice Mayor Nazarian regarding questions. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here this evening and making this presentation. I originally just had was asking questions and plan to just get further questions because from the staff report in our packet it had the total cost for WCA but we didn't have the total cost for Great Scott so I didn't have that comparison and as I was looking at the attachments I saw the breakdown in pricing for WCA with the rate schedule per unit. And then on the back on attachment to it had a breakdown of the per unit cost for great Scott versus in comparison to WCA. So looking at that without having a context of how many trees are in each of these different unit prices, I didn't have a context to really see the total price of WCA versus Great Scott. And if you look at it in this way, if you just look at Unicoss, it looks like WCA is significantly more per unit for all of their services. And so without a comparison, I couldn't really, other than the unicoss because I don't know how many trees in each of those categories you're actually using. So my question was, what's the total cost of the contract for great Scott versus WCA, just looking at pricing? I have this here and I also had another number that said over the total time of the contract, the seven-year contract, I think great Scott would be like 27 million and great Scott would be around 20 million. WCA would be 27, great Scott, be about 20 million. So it's like a million more year on the average over seven years. So that's my question. I just really wanted to understand further, if it's a million dollars more year on average, of course, what's the real defining factor? There's no question to me that in an emergency, having that immediate response is so critical. We talk about safety in our city all the time and how that is our priority and having the ability to respond to that is important in many ways. Just like we look at our response times for fire and for police so I can appreciate that greatly. When we look at just general services, I don't know how that breakdown would go. My thought was, is it possible to have one service contract for emergency services and another service contract for your regular services? That was one question I had not knowing what the total differences are. So this fills out a lot more information, so thank you. But that would be my only question, is there a way? There's such a, it is very costly. It's not that I'm opposed to that. It's when I look at it in comparison to your second best option. It's quite a bit of money, so those are my questions. So I think the question you want me to answer is, is there a way to split out emergency response from regular and some of those when I ask the same question it's really embedded throughout how how they look at their pricing I mean obviously they have a response to come back but there it's some many of those costs are embedded and it's it's about the continuity of having the same people working on your trees from an emergency as who is also maintaining them. So that is, that's why we wouldn't recommend breaking it out. And we've had a relationship with them since 2011? Yes. Okay. Well, those are my questions, thanks. Mayor, please. Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much. This was really helpful. I think it was, it was, we, we really value our trees and, and it was a great report and, uh, we are known as the Garden Capital of the World. I think that this was one of the, it's a big cost and it's a huge line item, which is also why I was curious about it. I did have questions about whether we can do some of this work in-house. We do have a very robust public works department and I asked about what that would look like as far as crews and equipment and if we were to manage some of that, and I guess in the long run, maybe you could speak to it, but I don't know, constantly. So we used to have tree trimmers, or I mean, I long, long time ago. And we went and negotiated with the unions to outsource for a number of reasons that was a decision actually before I came, I know it's shocking. But, and the problem with us having to do some of it in-house and some of it out as it becomes a complication when we, if we accidentally use our in-house for something that the contractor uses or more importantly uses the contractor for something that our in-house people do and then we run into difficulties and I think the original reason was that we felt that this was cheaper and we didn't have to have all the equipment that's associated with it as well. And it's expensive, the equipment. Yes. Right. What is the trimming cycle kind of like a timeline for our trees? We have 2700 trees, 27,000 trees, about 10,500 of them get trimmed. So I'm gonna start and then you will see Ken come up and correct me. So we do the palms annually and that's really because we don't want the skirts. I think that was apparent during these last fires, you don't want the skirts to be there and that's's a, that those are annual. The pines are on a four year schedule. And the other trees are I think are on a five year schedule. Look, I've been taught. You got a nape plus. I think that's excellent. Excellent. Excellent. My other question was also regarding if our trees are insured and are mayor touched upon that already. And I just want to say that during the recent fires and winds, our city really didn't immaculate job of cleaning up. So whether we use the companies that we are working with or I think our public works department also did a great job and they deserve to be recognized for that. So thank you very much. Thank you. Those are my questions. One other question. Would you like to make a motion? I have one other question. In terms of the length of the contract because of the difference in price and I know that this is a trusted vendor but it is so much more money. Is there a downside to looking at doing a contract that's less than the five years plus the two option years? I mean, there is a, every time though, we've gone out to an RFP, it's only gotten higher. Haven't seen it go lower, I'd like to see that. But so that's, we're happy to go back out at three years, five years. But I haven't ever seen it go lower when we go through these RFP processes. One other question is why did they choose to go with the first two years, no CPI, and then after that they went CPI and did great SCOTGO CPI every year? Great SCACO is not to do a CPI at all. So I can't suppose to that, but I can only guess that they're trying to get into business into the LA area. Okay. All right, thank you. Anybody else have a question? A question. So we're going to look at the general fund estimates in a little while. Is there a, was this expense budgeted over the next several years? And so how does this contract compare to the budget estimates? So this is, you will see a bet. And for next year for this contract, a budget enhancement form. Sorry, because I have a few Beth. You know how many? 1.3. Okay. In the same though, I think you'll see also, I mean, I don't know. We're also arranging our CIP differently. So even though we're asking more for this contract, we're also trying to use up some carry-overs and not ask for more money in other places. So. Okay. Alright. Thanks. I just have a couple questions. The year over year starts in year three. The increase, the increase for, on WCA starts in year three. And it's at what percentage, I'm sorry. Five percent. And sorry, just one clarification. I think we, it's whatever actual CPI is. Oh yes, yes. We, I think I hope conservatively estimated five percent annually. So even though the total seven year term comes in at 27 million if we get back to a you know 2 3% CPI I think we'll probably come in closer to about 25 million. Okay, so it's CPI is what the CPI yes, I'm sorry we use 5% as a budgeted item. Is there a cap on the CPI adjustment? I don't believe there is. No. Seeing no. Okay. And the CPI adjustment is also for the two option years. Yes. And the option is whose option? Our option. So we we're under no obligation to do the additional two years. If CPI goes crazy or we're not happy or something else better comes along, we can end it and go back out and find somebody else. And I'll ask the obvious question, why don't we have a cap on the CPI? I mean, I guess we should, you know, look at the price of eggs. We probably should have done that, but the initial RFP, we didn't put that as part of the spec. That should probably be part of all of our contracts moving forward. If we have CPI, I don't remember many contracts having it tied into the CPI. It's usually a fixed number. That's right. I think most of our agreements have a fixed either 3 to 5% annual increase. Can we go back and ask them to cap it at a number such as 5%. Yes we can. Okay. I would suggest that. I would suggest potentially doing a new RFP after three years. Because you have the two set years, there's third years or so. The problem I would have with that is that you see what the six year contract was with WCA and how much it went up. I have not seen a contract that like the trash collection contracts, it hasn't gone up significantly over what we have contracted for. So I would, I don't have a problem going, going out as long as this as a five years. Would you entertain instead of having the last two years be city options, the last three years be the city options. Same basic contract, I would work with you. Just to get out of order. So I'm gonna use the right. I just got where WCA is willing to cap at 3%. Oh, 3%. Okay, then I would keep that. I like that. I would keep it. Okay, never mind. Make the option in year five, not six and seven. Right, so the last three years would be, it would be, okay. Okay, I like that. Thank you. You must work in government. 20% increase instead of 60. Can't have a free beer. I will say just parenthetically, the WCA's ability to come on a moment's notice and repair trees have come down. It is valuable. I've seen it several times in the last six months. There's a tree that went down on Sierra. So in her block, they were there in a matter of minutes, or it seemed like. Then we had my wife saw a broken branch on a tree hanging off of a Jack around an Alta. They were there within a day to repair that. And then lastly a tree, a private tree fell over into the public right away in El Lovato. Last we took out a car and also one of our lighting boxes. And we had someone taking that tree apart in the matter. It's clearing the sidewalk in a matter of like an hour. We have a lot of trees. And I want to say that certainly anybody from WCA, the work that is done is just excellent. I mean, I remember leaving my home in the morning and there was a tree across my street. And when I came home, that was an early day I came home. You couldn't even tell the tree was down. So, you know, the work is excellent. I think the concerns we all have up here is certainly the fiscal concerns of a city that may be looking at deficits in the coming years. So that's why we're doing this for anybody out there that is wondering why we're questioning it. So with that, I just want to make sure I got it correct. The CPI is capped to 3% years 5, 6, and 7. Yes. Okay, and then, and then options in the office. In office. Yeah. Can I make the motion. Is that anybody else? Please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. An agreement with. I'm. Approval. Approval. Right. No. Yes. Approval of an agreement with West Coast Arbors Inc. for annual tree maintenance services within city limits and approval of corresponding purchase orders for the tree services for fiscal year 2024 2025 and the not to exceed amount of 7,000 As amended I'll second Councillor, Councillor, Councillor Member Wells? Yes. Councillor Member Corman? Yes. Councillor Member Mirish? Yes. Vice Mayor Nazarian? Yes. And Mayor Friedman? Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now the week. Oh. All right. Just wait. I'm ready. Okay. Moving right along. since we got rid of all the easy stuff. Item number G1, review of Commission standardization, ad hoc committee recommendations concerning the charitable solicitations commission, health and safety commission and human relations commission and Assistant City Manager Ryan Goliq will be presenting on it. All right. Good evening, Mayor Friedman, Vice Mayor Nazarian and members of the City Council. Ryan Goliq, your Assistant City Manager. and I'm here this evening to present to you recommendations from our Commission Standardization Adhoc Committee. City Council, Ryan Goliq, your assistant city manager, and I am here this evening to present to you recommendations from our commission standardization ad hoc committee regarding some of our commissions. Just to give a little bit of background real quickly here, we've had the commission standardization ad hoc committee formed over the last couple of years with the main purpose being to standardize some of the functions and practices of the commissions as well as looking at reducing costs and reallocating resources where appropriate and making sure that the work that the commissions are doing is still relevant. Staff meets with the commission, sorry, with the committee periodically to address standardization issues. Some of the topics that we have tackled in the recent past pertain to eligibility requirements for being on a commission requiring background checks for commissioners, which is something we never did in the past and we now do for all recruitment. We looked at the rent stabilization commission and found that that commission was no longer needed. They had fulfilled the objectives of the council and And we continue to review various matters. What we've looked at more recently in August of 2024 was the Charitable Solicitations Commission and their duties and relevancy in today's environment. And also in November of 2024 and February of 2025, we looked at the possible merger of the Health and Safety Commission with the Human Relations Commission to look at what the duties were, whether there were similarities and an opportunity to create some synergy there. Based on the meetings that we have had recently, the Commission Standardization Adhoc Committee has recommended Sunsetting the Charitable Solicitations commission and also merging the health and safety commission with the human relations commission. So, I'm going to go through here just review of the charitable solicitations commission real quickly and what we actually did based on the direction of the ad hoc committee was rather than just looking at the municipal code and what are the duties that are called out. We took a little bit deeper dive and actually reviewed the last two, plus a couple months, two years, plus a few months worth of meeting agendas for both the Charitable Solicitations Commission and the Health and Safety Commission. I'm sorry, now I'm getting my submissions mixed up. Sorry, Charitable, charitable solicitations commission we looked at regarding the work that they do and whether that relevancy still exists today. And so the charitable solicitations commission, we didn't have a commission in 1942, but we actually first started regulating charitable solicitations in 1942. That was actually a result of the war. And people in the community going out and soliciting donations of money, land, other valuables. And really what was happening is that there were some unscrupulous people out saying that they were soliciting donations for the war. And really it was for their own personal gain. And so at that time, the city adopted regulations regarding how you go about soliciting charitable contributions. Fast forward to 1962, and that was when the commission was first formed. It was under a slightly different name, but it was what our present day charitable solicitations commission is and does. And what it was was to provide an opportunity for transparency in solicitations, provide information about people or organizations that were out doing this work, and also to provide information on where that money was going or being allocated to. Since that time, there have been significant increases in the level of regulation, both at the state and federal level regarding charitable solicitations. There's also a lot more transparency. You now can go online, you can access information about these organizations. The IRS has required filings that are posted online and you can see all of the information about the organization, who the officers are, where money goes. It's a very different system today than it was back in 1942 when we adopted our first set of regulations. And so that was one of the things that the committee looked at was really there's been a change in the overall world of charitable solicitations and the ability for the community to access information and see which organizations are legitimate and which ones perhaps are not. Another thing that was looked at is that the Beverly Hills regulations differ from surrounding cities, which utilize administrative processes. When you look at Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Culver City, West Hollywood, we are the only city that has this sort of commission structure setup. And all the other cities people go through just an administrative process with staff to get their permit and do their solicitations. The commission also heard from the police department, which supports the charitable solicitation commission. The police department really does all of the processing review and administrative work associated with these permits. And the commission really serves as a forum to just present that information publicly. And so the committee found that the police department can still continue to process those permits and that the staffing resources could be allocated to other ongoing services that we provide. And so based on that review that happened, the committee does recommend that the charitable solicitations commission be sun-setted. We do have two options for sun-setting the commission if that is the council's direction. The first and I think recommended option would be to have it sunset as of July 1st, 2025. That is the point in time in which we will naturally go down to three commissioners on the commission. As you know, three commissioners is the minimum for a quorum, but having only three commissioners can also be a little bit challenging because if you have one absence, then you no longer have a quorum. And so when we hit July 1st of this year, we'll be down to three. I think that would be an appropriate time to sunset the commission. However, if the council's interest is to really maximize the amount of time that sitting commissioners can serve, another option would be January 1st of 2026. January 1st of 2026, we will go down to two commissioners at which time we will not have a quorum and it will be impossible for the commission to continue meeting. So those are the two options, but the recommendation was for July 1st so that we don't get into a situation where we have recurring issues of a quorum. Okay, now I'm going to move on to consideration questions. Can we do that one first? Is that? If you would like to, happy to do that. Just one question. In the presentation, there was no discussion of a soft landing for the charitable commission. Charitable solicitation commissioners. Do we have one? What do you mean? In terms of if their terms are cut short. So depending on whether you choose the July 1st date or the January 1st date, if you were to do it July 1st, we would have three commissioners who would have their terms cut short. One would be only by six months and the others would differ a little bit, but probably around a year or two cut short. What we have talked about in the past and I have later on in the presentation. One thing that we did for the rent stabilization commissioners was that we said we would waive the one year waiting period before you apply for another commission, and that's something that we would suggest here is for anybody whose term is cut short that they would not have to wait. They could apply immediately for other commissions in the city. Did I miss you saying that before? No, I hadn't gotten to that yet. Okay. Okay. Is that what you meant? Yeah. That's exactly what I meant. Obviously I knew what the answer was. I asked it, I didn't hear it. That is on one of my last slides. Okay. So, here we are, anybody in council chambers who would like to be heard on this matter? I don't know if Dr. Hillborn wanted to speak on this portion of it or the second portion. Okay. Anybody else in chambers that would like to address us on this? Anybody on the phone or email? We have no other public comment on this item. Okay and if we could have a liaison report. Thank you very much. So thank you for the report. This was a commission, an ad hoc that Council Member Corman and I served on. It was brought to us at the request of staff and I believe Council in an effort to create greater efficiency and address some of the issues that were happening. We're grateful to all of the commissioners that came out to the meeting and we had several meetings and did a very, very, very thorough review. We didn't take the situation lightly. We asked staff to make several reports. Just some background. The commission was established in 1962 to provide oversight. Ryan, you went through a lot of this, but I'm just going to reiterate it so that it's very clear. To protect and for protecting our residents over time regulations enforcement and access to public information have evolved making its original function unnecessary. The mission is now obsolete which happens with commissions at times The commission's responsibilities have shifted to administrative functions, primarily handled by the police department. Residents can now search and verify relevant information through public available online resources. And there are many different sites for that, Charity Navigator and etc. And other cities including West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Culver City and Los Angeles have adopted streamlining processes without a commission. There were operational challenges, the commission struggled to maintain quarantine times, and we needed more than two members for decisions. It is no longer a distinctive policy making or regulatory function, and our recommendation is to sunset the commission. With regard to the July 1st or the January 1st to sunset the commission I am fine with the January 1st. I'll allow my colleague to share his view. I don't know if we were asked about that. Basically the goal is to eliminate redundancy and streamline responsibilities within existing city departments for a more efficient and modernized approach. I would agree with the one year period to apply for another commission. The one area that we did not discuss that I think would be important is that there is a report that is shared with the police department and I would recommend that perhaps we can have maybe not as full or robust report but some form of report to be brought to to City Council. Is that something that we could look at? I believe that's possible. I know we have kept in sub in here, but I think we could probably provide that as like a sea item as part of your study session periodically. Yes. Originally I had suggested that we move that to the charitable foundation. However, because it is our charitable foundation, we are not able to have that. What? Can't mix and match. Exactly. We can't mix and match. So therefore, that would be the recommendation of the ad hoc. I'd like to allow my colleague to give information as well. But let's hear from Capt. Zoobin first. So we do we do produce a monthly report that's provided to the commissioners We do produce an annual report that's published online So if you desire we can bring a monthly report and do a presentation here or do a quarterly or the yearly report if that suffices is online I would recommend a yearly report. I don't think it's necessary to have a monthly report. I think the whole process behind this is that the police department is already taking that position on and to have you writing a report monthly again would defeat the purpose. And as long as it's online, I think that's sufficient. I would recommend an annual report just so that for public sake, it's in our information packets. Okay. You want to? Yeah, the only thing I would add is that obviously, another thing that came into play here is the difficulty in recruiting commissioners from time to time for this commission, other commissions, also the cost savings involved when you don't have commissions that aren't necessary. And the last thing I'm seeing, I don't recall a single public comment that didn't agree with this recommendation. That's right. And then as far as the, I don't remember focusing on when the commission should actually censor, but we did discuss it. I still recall it, but I'm fine with either one. It sort of makes sense that if you know it's going to sunset July 1st makes sense. But on the other hand, we do have a longstanding, you know, tradition of not closing down commissions before they can operate. And the commission could still operate until January 1, so I could go with either date as far as the Sunsetting is concerned. Okay, thank you very good and we'll go to, don't go too far Max, I know I have a question also but I'm not my turn yet. Council member Wells. Thank you very much. Thank you for the report and thank you to the liaison'sons for all of your hard work on this. I know you're not finished yet as well. So thank you for continuing to do this work. I think it's really important. I had one question and that was can you just remind me how frequently this commission meets. I think it's not it's quarterly I think. No, we meet once a month. It is once a month. Okay. So in terms of the report and where we are today, I agree with the recommendation of the liaisons. I think this has been a really important commission in its origin and how it's been performing. I appreciate so much the work of the commissioners on this commission and their work to vet and to ensure that there's compliance and transparency and it's provided such a great service to our city historically. So it is a really wonderful commission and I appreciate so much the work of all those that have served on it. In terms of the date of its sunsetting, I could go either way as well. I think that before I thought it was, for some reason I thought they didn't meet. I thought they met more quarterly. So I would say it's probably a difference of a meeting or two. But July 1st or January 1st is either way. I think it's really a question of if it's difficult to have a quorum. And then maybe I'll just let you guys make that recommendation. It sounds like you did, which was July 1st, so I'm okay with that. Yeah, and that's my I think mistake. So when we went to the committee, we only we talked about it a real brief period time and we only talked about the July 1st date. I really just wanted to make sure that for full transparency, you all had the information that they could in theory operate until January of next year, but it would mean that you're down to the three and you run the regular risk of not having a quorum if just one person is absent. Right. So I'm okay with July 1st. Also, I'm certainly in favor of waiting the one-year waiting the one year waiting period for those that are coming off the commission early. So that's it. I really appreciate the work and I really appreciate all the commissioners that have served on this commission. Thank you. Thank you. Greg again? Obviously I support the recommendation. If July 1, 2025 is the date, that's the date. That's what everyone else thinks. And obviously I agree with the wave in the one-year waiting period to reapply for a different commission. And, John, I mean, if we've decided that it's obsolete, then there's no reason in letting it go until January 1. So let's sunset it on July 1. And if there is an issue that as I understand it that some of these charities are raising less than what is it 50%, then it should come to us then maybe we should discuss about what the issues are but I would also obviously support allowing anyone who wants to apply, to apply immediately and not have to wait a year. And vice mayor. Yes. I would be fine with the July 1st in agreement with my colleagues. I too want to just reiterate, as we have said many times, we want to thank the commissioners for serving this commissioner's serve as our eyes and ears and they serve the council and so we're very grateful for their time and for their service. Okay and Captain Subin as you've been waiting for my my delving questions here do we still have outreach and are we going to continue to have outreach to the various hotels, notifying them, asking them to notify anybody who has an event at their hotels that they should be getting a permit? Yes, regardless of the commission, they still understand that. That's still part of the drill. Actually in the packet this past month, there were three events that were hosted the prior month that did not pull it permanent and we were notified. So we are going to contact those events. But yes, the hotel managers at all the different key room managers know if someone comes to them with an event, they tell them right away you have to get a permit, talk to the charitable solicitation commission, there's a permit process online. That's still going to happen no matter what. And in terms of a reconciliation of an event, when it occurs, if there is a deficit in the ability to be able to donate 50%, they're notified at least on the first occurrence and told about it, correct? Yeah, the 50% rule that we speak about is not in the municipal code right now. It's a policy standard that the commission has set. So we strive for 50%. So when that happens, when they fall below the 50% We do contact them and we let them know in in fact They've we asked them to show up on the meeting and they have done that a few times So we're pretty strict with that. Okay, so how was that gonna be handled? So we did I didn't want to get too far ahead here because we wanted to have the conversation with the full council here But with the subcommittee we did talk about if there's an ordinance to sunset the commission that that ordinance would codify that requirement for the 50%. So we would make that become not just policy, but the law. Okay. I'm a Tantry question. We would still contact them. We'd still have the staff still do that. Okay, and thank you and I also agree July 1st probably should be the date. It's an advantage for the one commissioner who would be circulating off at the end of the year anyway, because then that person will be able to apply that much sooner if that person isn't interested in another commission that much earlier. So I would agree with that also. Okay, so we will do the motion. We will combine the motion at the time. Okay. All right. Thank you and then we'll go on to the second part. Okay. Second part. On to consideration of merging the Health and Safety Commission with the Human Relations Commission. So I'll get back to where I got off track originally. When we met with the committee the first time at the end of 2024 to look at the potential merger, we looked more specifically at what the duties are that are spelled out in the municipal code. And some of the feedback that we got was we needed to do more research, we needed to identify more specifically whether there were or were not similarities between the commissions. And so we went back and looked at a little over two years worth of agendas for both the Health and Safety Commission and the Human Relations Commission to identify the common themes, things that were similar, things that were different again to see how much overlap there really was between the commissions. We also were asked to look at what the resource needs were to support those commissions. I think the resources pertains to all of our commissions, but it came up initially in the context of looking at the merger of these two commissions. So as we went through the last two plus years worth of agendas, we found a fair number of topics that were common to both the Health and Safety Commission and the Human Relations Commission. Both commissions get monthly reports from the BHPD and the BHUSD. They both discussed the day of wellness. Both received reports and information on national night out. They both have covered numerous topics to learn about hate crime. They also regularly discussed unhoused issues and some of the city's responses, programs, resources that we offer in order to address that issue. There have also been recurring discussions about mental health and well-being, bullying and social media, also safety-related discussions. And the last item here is the community assistance grant funding. That, as you know, that program has shifted away from the commissions, but because it was a significant topic that was discussed by both, we didn't want to overlook it here. So those were the common topics. And again, we tried to group those into more broad topical areas. So this is not exactly what's on each agenda, but those were the kind of the categories that they fit within. The topics of discussion that we found to be unique to the Health and Safety Commission were that they get monthly reports from the fire department, whereas the Human Relations Commission does not. They also had lots of discussion about smoking, about COVID. They looked at water quality and supply during emergencies. They had discussions about emergency preparedness and also had a number of conversations about chronic illnesses. The topics of discussion that we found to be unique to the Human Relations Commission their were their civility programs, the Beverly Hills Reads program, kindness matters, and also critical conversations. When the committee reviewed this information, the committee found that generally there were more similarities than differences between the commissions, a lot of the themes that were common to the commissions revolved around health, community education, wellness and safety. And the committee did find that merger was appropriate in order to reduce the overlap of topics and duties between the commissions and also make a more efficient use of staffing resources. The committee did recommend that the merger should occur via natural attrition, with nobody's term getting cut short. That would result in merger occurring on July 1st of 2026. On July 1st of 2026, we would naturally be down to seven commissioners, which is more than our normal five, but seven is a, I think, a good manageable number. It also gives you an odd number for any tiebreakers. If those were to occur, although it's usually pretty uncommon for these types of commissions. Then what would happen is as you went on from there, you would work your way down to five commissioners, ultimately, that would be in line with our regular arrangement for all of our commissions which have five commissioners. So I've covered this but I want to make crystal clear for anybody that's on commissions because I know we've had some comments about whether the merger should happen or not. So there's not a single commissioner whose term would get cut short and also the remaining commissioners that would be on once the commission's merged, they would actually have enhanced responsibilities rather than reduced responsibilities. One of the things that the committee members talked about was there was not a desire to eliminate duties. It was really about consolidating the like responsibilities. We still want to get the same level of information and value for the City Council and for the community as they participate in these different topics. And so that would be the ultimate goal. And if the council can curse with that, we would work to combine those duties, make them a little bit cleaner, a little bit more consistent. But certainly our goal is not to reduce the level of discussions that happen at the commissions there. The next thing I want to go through here and I don't know if the council wants to hear the whole list. There's a lot of things here. We tried to lay out all of the resources that go into supporting a commission. It's a long list, but I also know the committee found it helpful to get a little more inside into what goes into supporting commissions because it's quite extensive. So if you'd like to hear, I will go through all of them. No. All right, I'm going to not go through every single item here, but the point of this is, I think people could read it. People can read it. I think the point is sort of like you get your commission packet and you have your meeting and it's just like magic. It just shows up and it seems like it's easy. It happens every month. And the reality is there's a huge number of steps and staff resources and hours that go into every single step I've tried to lay out kind of the chronological process that staff goes through every time we have a meeting every time We prepare a packet and it's it's an enormous amount of work that a lot of people don't don't see and don't know about because it happens behind the scenes Here's the next page on it, you know getting all the way down to bringing initiatives forward to the city council and what all of this results in, it might be a little bit mind-aboggling, but our average commission meeting requires about 100 to 200 hours of staff time for both the lead-up and preparation for it and then also having the meeting and doing any follow-on work that results from that meeting. And those 100 to 200 hours just from a straight dollars and cents standpoint means that each commission costs on average probably several hundred thousands of dollars per year if not more to support. And money is important but also there's the opportunity cost that goes with that. So those 100 to 200 hours of staff time every single month for each commission. That's 100 to 200 hours of staff time that can't be put towards providing other services and programs for our community. And so that's really just for consideration for you as you look at this. So we get to the direction that we need from the City Council. The first ones here, charitable solicitations, we already covered those. And so then we're going to go down to the third bullet, I'm sorry, note we covered the third bullet point. The fourth and fifth bullet points, should the Health and Safety Commission be merged with the Human Relations Commission? And if merged confirmation that the merger would be effective July 1st, 2026. And if we do receive that direction from the council, we would work with the City Attorney's Office to draft ordinances. One, the ordinance that would sunset the charitable solicitations commission. And two, an ordinance that would merge the Health and Safety Commission with the Human Relations Commission and also consolidate those duties. And that concludes my presentation. Okay, thank you. She looks at me to make sure I don't forget. Now the time for oral communication on the matter. I have one speaker slip. If anybody else would like to address us on it, bring up a speaker slip and if we can call Dr. Hillborn please. Thank you Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council Members. Contrary to what you may think, I'm not here to oppose this presentation. I think it was well presented. I understand their costs and so on. Also, I appreciate all the work that the city staff does. Our leadership of our commission and the staff spent numerous hours. So I don't find that surprising. But I want to reiterate my caution in about diluting the health focus. Currently, that's a major part of the Health and Safety Commission. I don't want to repeat what I said on November 18th, although I have it here, so I can provide it to you. But we live in a time where our federal government appears to abdicate its responsibility for public health with loss of staff and leadership at agencies such as CDC and USAID. Those agencies go a long way to protect the health and welfare nationally. Pullback on messaging and education has caused measles to reemerge after was eradicated only a few years ago. These changes are forcing responsibility to fall on local governments rather than the federal government. Frankly, it was only a few years ago, but before the data that was presented, because it's more than two years, that I, then as a new commissioner, got a call from then then mayor Mirish who called me to ask for guidance on COVID including should we shut the city down. I had an opinion on that. I think we followed it and I think the council weighed in properly on that. But there was input on health. I think the important issue is that the health issues ebb and. And it appears that because of what's going on right now, we may be in the calm before the storm. So while I'm not here to oppose this decision, I would please ask you to make sure that if you dilute the health focus of our commission structure at this critical time, that you make provisions for resident expert input to quickly respond to emerging health crisis that appear to be probably on the horizon. Thanks. Thank you. If I made Dr. Hillboard, your input has been invaluable, meaning it's valuable, the entire time, starting when John Tagguck, a group of physicians, to give us counsel on the COVID issues. So I want to thank you on behalf of all of us up here for your service and your continued service with us. And I'll be back again after my term concludes which won't be impacted by this. And I'll give you the, this was November. All right. Thanks again. Thank you. Anyone else would like to address us in chambers? Not seeing. We'll go to any public comment on, on electronic means. There are no other public comments. OK, and we'll go to the liaison report. Yes, thank you very much for that. Nice to meet you. Thanks, I appreciate these. So the recommendation was to merge the human relations and the health and safety commission. I wanted to take a moment again to thank everyone who participated and attended the meeting. It was very well attended. We went through several meetings because we wanted to ensure that we had all of the information necessary to make a well informed decision because again, we value the service that the commissioners bring to our city. The purpose of the commission standardization ad hoc was tasked with creating efficiency within city commissions and we had several of the meetings as I mentioned we heard from many of our commissioners. It was interesting because once we made our recommendation several of the commissioners called me and they were in support of the decision that we had made. So they agreed with what we were recommending. A challenging, this isn't easy, sometimes it's challenging and an unpopular decision to make. But again, it's necessary for effective governing. So we reviewed the commission structure. As was mentioned in the very thorough report, thank you, Ryan. We conducted a thorough evaluation of merging the two commissions. The city clerk had also expressed concerns about the commission vacancies and having a hard time about filling commissions and having people applying for. So that was another factor that I wanted to bring up. That was one of our first meetings that we had had a very robust discussion about that. There was an analysis focused on commonalities and differences between the two commissions, more similarities than differences in certain areas. But our recommendation was to merge the two commissions. The duties to improve efficiency and streamlining. We did ask for a very thorough analysis of what it entails to put a meeting together to host these events that we have in our community, the amount of staff time that's recommended, the amount of resources. This is all time and resources that our staff can be spending on other important city events. And topics that would be more beneficial to our community. So, again, there's deep gratitude to our dedicated commissioners for their service. They serve as our eyes and ears and provide valuable insight to improve our city. Their commitment and contributions are essential and we want to ensure that they have the ability to continue on, so no commissioner will lose their seat until their term is up. The cost analysis was really eye-opening and telling many commissioners expressed that they had no idea the amount of time, resources and money that it took to put these meetings together, including like drafting and reviewing a report, printing agenda packets, recording broadcasting and editing these meetings to make sure that they are online, uploaded, and work in conjunction with our agenda so that there's, it's all technology-based and up-to-date. Staff attendance from multiple departments. I mean, we have our police department, our fire chief oftentimes, our Beverly Hills Unified School District members, public works, et cetera. There's a lot of staff time as we mentioned. So hopefully this real allocation of staff duties will reduce overall program costs and re-evaluating commission priorities, a lot of the commission priorities and the mission of the commissions had been removed and the commissions had reared off into a different direction. So I have a few thoughts on that as well to bring back the priority setting discussions for the commissions and to have the liaisons. It was recommended that we have the two liaisons meet two times a year with the various commissions so that we make sure that they're on track and they're doing what is happening. So just in conclusion, merging the commissions, we're not getting rid of the commissions, but rather consolidating, it's gonna be more effective use of our resources. Data-driven approach ensures that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. And the next step is obviously clear transition to plan and maintain the integrity and purpose of both of the commissions. One recommendation that was not discussed that I'd like to bring up with my colleagues' permission and you could speak to it as well if you agree or not. I think that when we do our planning and goal setting for the year, there should be 10 pages or however many commissions that we have and recommendations to correlate with our goals. And we could say these are the ones that are recommended for these commissions to work on. Now we have reactive commissions and we have the ones that perhaps need more guidance. So I wouldn't necessarily say that for the planning commission or the architectural or public works because those are commissions that deal directly with Issues that are brought to them, but there's the guidance of like the Reckon Parks or public works health health and safety arts and culture a certain Other commissions it would be nice for counsel to have a say and as opposed to just doing it with the liaison meeting that would come to our goal setting So all five of us as a council would have an equal say in Reviewing the goal process and and giving them a little more direction that was one thing that was very clear and was said over and over again during these meetings That the council member, I mean the commissioners really wanted some guidance and feedback and oftentimes perhaps they were filling that time up with ideas and not to say that they weren't great ideas but they weren't necessarily what the task was. So again thank you to all of our commissioners and I'm going to turn it over to my colleague further if I missed anything. No, not really. So first as the report staff were indicated and as I think we've, vice mayor just emphasized I would emphasize again, you know, the proposed merger would not dilute the responsibilities of either commission. It would blend them together so that the merged commission would have all the responsibilities of the individual commissions that came before them. They came before. So I just want to make sure it's clear on that. No one, we're not going to dilute the health and safety or the merged commissions the merged commissions responsibility to be back to health and safety in our community. That said, so looking back at the origins of these commissions, it's interesting because the Human Relations Commission to some extent was formed as a vehicle to field complaints about the police and and also staff. And over time, the commission has sort of moved away from that responsibility, partly just because a lot of the complaints for sort of PD goes to PD, and a lot of the complaints about city goes to the city manager's office. And then once the complaints are fielded, it becomes a personnel personnel matter that HR deals with and there really isn't a place for the commission to weigh in on those private matters. So with that responsibility sort of sunsetting naturally as the laws progress in the employment field, the Human Relations Commission transitioned to more of a mental health commission. And we saw a lot of the overlap between the commissions related to mental health. And in fact, if you look at the staff report tonight, the unique topics to the Health and Safety Commission all pretty much revolved around physical health. But the overlap was substantial from what we saw, and even some of the programs that were identified by staff as unique to the Human Relations Commission, involve mental health, things like civility and kindness and things of that sort. And the Health and Safety Commission also dealt with some of those issues. So there does need to be a natural fit. Emerging the two commissions as they exist today. And so, and we obviously saw a lot of the efficiencies of doing so. So that's what we thought it was a good recommendation. And again, the responsibilities wouldn't go away. Just they would be in the merged commission. No commissioner would have their term cut short. They would go down to five commissioners eventually by natural attrition. So it just seemed to be a logical step. With respect to the monitoring of the commissions, there was discussions both at the commission standardization commission, a committee meeting and some of our policy manual committee meetings about institutionalizing liaison meetings between the city council members and liaison and the chair and vice chair of the commission so everyone's on the same page And and I think that makes a lot of sense So anyway, but that's really for another day Tonight really talking about the mergers of these two commissions so that's that's really pretty much all I had to add Very good we'll go to questions and comments starting with customer was. Okay, again thank you so much for the work that both of you have been doing on this. I know that it's been a lot and I've really, really appreciate it. And it is it's enlightening to see the amount of work that goes behind the scenes to put these commission meetings together, including liaison meetings and ad hoc meetings. And we have, it's a lot, I've seen it because I watch the meetings. And so I see a lot of the time that it takes from staff that are present at the meetings, but it really lays it out here. So it's very illuminating. I think our commissions are so important. And I would, fact that we're not sometimes not having as many people applying to the commissions to me in many ways on some reason to reduce them. I think that's a reason to encourage more people to be participating in the city and really working on that. I think the reasons for merging these is just some of the things that you've already mentioned. The purpose are that the actual practices of these commissions have changed since it's origin and it makes sense in many ways to merge them and I can see how this would be the case here. If I just look at the human relations commission list of civility programs, Beverly Hills reads, kindness matters and critical conversations as the things that were highlighted for the last couple years. I think these programs in many ways, like critical conversations I think was one year but it hasn't been a repeated thing and I think that was such a great program the year they did it in many ways what I would think of human relations commission doing so I would hope to see more of that. The kindness matters really kind of layers on top of many of the programs going on in the city for the week from the farmers market or the senior Valentine's dance or walk to school Wednesday. It's a nice layer over the other programs that are happening but in many ways you can see that it could merge with something else or another commission. Beverly Hills reads is the high school English program, some are reading. So that merging with the program with human relations really created an even better program for the year and at the beginning of the year. And that's a great event, but it's merged with the school district. And the civility program we don't see much of, and other than the signage and the award, so I'd like to, if that is part of what stays, I'd love to see that, become something more of a meaning other than just the signage throughout the city and acknowledging as someone in the community. So I just think that could be more. I think it makes a lot of sense to merge the two commissions. I think the health part of health and safety is so important be it from emergency preparedness to the safety issues that we see coming up, the safety issues that the commission has been addressing and I really support continuing that and I think it's really important and in many ways some of those things have a mental health component to it, health and safety from a social emotional standpoint can be have emerging there. So it makes sense to me in many ways. And I think this will be a really great commission combining them. So I look forward to seeing that. I had a couple thoughts that I just will throw out. As we talk about the commissions in general, like what you mentioned about having twice a year liaison committee, meeting. I'm curious if that couldn't happen on a regularly scheduled meeting for those commissions. So that staff isn't setting up another liaison meeting. And having seen now how much work goes into setting those up in the agenda and recording and all of that work is it possible to have liaison meeting schedule as part of a regular commission meeting on their regular schedule time. So that way it just kind of works into their regular schedule. I think that would make a lot of sense. And then the other thing that I would challenge is that there are a lot of reports by the city staff that are monthly to each of the commissions and they're the same report. So it's the police department, fire department, our community services is reporting on events that happened. And I don't know if there's a way, just like you do the mayor's cabinet where the commission and chairs come and do their report. If that wasn't included as part of that, so that everyone got that information one time. Instead of having police go to every commission meeting and do a report or a fire, maybe they do it once a month in one place and then it gets taken back by their commissioners just to make that more efficient. And then the other thing I have a question about is the timing of the work plan mirroring the fiscal year. So right now it seems like the commissions I'll do their work plans at different times. And I just am curious if it wouldn't make more sense to try and have their work plans mirror with when you do, we do our priorities, doing the work plans many that was exactly when I was recommending okay that we have a page for each when we're doing our work plan sink that each each commission also has a page included in our work plan for the commissions so that when we're talking about let's talk about x y and, if that correlates with various commissions, it could be included in their work plan at the end of the year to review. Well, I don't know how that works when they do their work plan at different times. Well, so they also have, I mean, correct me wrong, but the Chair and Vice Chair of each commission rolls over in July, right? So. Yes, it's July and January. So it's January when it's off. Yes. So what I would say is if you do, we do the, if we have the discussions during our budget, discussions in April and May, it's a natural jumping off period to start having to, you're happy, if you have biannual meetings, is on meetings, you'd have one in July and one in January. Yeah, makes sense. So those are my only other suggestions and I support this and thank you. I think it's really coming along, so it's great. Okay, go back to Craig, any other comments? And council Member Mersh. What is the proposed name of the new commission? Is it the Health and Human Relations Commission? So we have not gotten that far yet. We didn't want to be too presumptive and spend time on that. We wanted to make sure we had direction from the Council first, but we would go back and come up with some options that we would present to the Council when we bring back to the Council. I mean, we would bring back to the that now too. It's not this is not rocket science. I mean you could either call it the health safety and human relations commission or or health and human relations commission. I mean, I'd be supportive, but I think we should give it a name. And I think it should be indicative of what we're expecting it to do. I guess the goal is to take the best of each of the commissions and do it in a more focused fashion is the idea that the how often should the commission supposed to mean. It would continue to be monthly the way that it is today. Okay. So I mean a monthly commission has an opportunity to get stuff done. So I would be supportive, I'm also supportive of Sunsetting charitable solicitations. That being said, of course, with these newfound resources, we should be able to do a better job of making these more effective and outreach and all of that. So I think it makes sense here. I think we shouldn't be consolidating for the sake of consolidation. I think here it does make sense. And yeah, I would health and human relations commission that sounds okay to me. Thanks. That sounds okay to me. Thanks. And vice-married for the commission? Okay. So I have the same thing. What the name, well, my comment is that the name should somehow reflect the mission of both. And I'm going to leave that for another night. I think we have still more business to do tonight and it will be done more effectively at the liaison level or commission level. Question in terms of either one of these commissions Ryan and I don't recall is there any special qualifications like on architecture requires a specific person. Like a doctor? Yeah, that's not that. There's no special requirements on these two commissions, right? I don't believe there are any special requirements unless somebody wants to correct that. I think there's someone in the health and other on the human relations commission. There you have it. Even the relations commission has just one position of a person that could be a non-resident, but an expert in social work or involved in the community. Previously we had Rabbi ride by Geller, part of the. So was an expert of that type. So I you know I'm not I'm not sure I think that I'm going to let that go back to. Yeah, it's very funny that you said that because that's what would I wrote from as well? I think it should be a consideration as to whether or not we want to continue with that. I would not if we're reducing it. I think it needs to be all residents. I'm not in favor of that. And perhaps, and that's fine. And perhaps a emphasis of having, if possible, a person who was a physician or others. If that's something that you want, but I think it should just be considered, not necessarily discussed. plenty of doctors in Beverly Hills. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And that wouldn't suggest, I wouldn't suggest it necessarily be somebody outside, but I just having that that position perhaps, if not definitely certainly considered as an important position to fill. Those are my only questions. The only concern I have about this is the fact that we're losing opportunities for residents to participate in government. And on the other hand, I don't think you create jobs just for the sake of creating jobs. So I am going to be supportive of this, but it does trouble me that we're losing opportunities for residents to be participatory. So with that, unless there's any other comments, we'll go for a motion. I'll make the motion, but I just want to point out, look at the room right now and how many staff members are here just to represent these two commissions. So thank you all for being here this evening and this is a reflection of what it entails to have these meetings happen every month. So thank you. All right. I'm going to move to approve the recommendation move to approve the recommendation of the Commission's standardization ad hoc committee to one, sunset the charitable solicitation commission, and two, merge the Health and Safety Commission with the Human Relations Commission. Second that. Second that. Roll. Yeah. I was just reading this. The alternative was to move this matter as a continued item to April 1st but it doesn't matter. If you have the roll please. Roll call. Council member Wells. Yes. Council member Korman. Yes. Council member Mirish. Vice Mayor Nazarian. Yes. And Mayor Friedman. Yes. Councilmember Mirish. Yes. Vice-Marianizarian. Yes. And Mayor Friedman. Yes. Okay. Moving right along here and seeing how anxious Jeff is to do this presentation. Okay, two more items. Midyear update on fiscal year 2024-25. General. Okay, two more items. Mid-year update on fiscal year 2024, 2024, 25, General Fund and Enterprise Fund financial results. And General Fund forecast and updates on cost reduction and revenue enhancement opportunities. This is not an action item, this is an information item. Correct. Correct. And we will have Jeff Merer present. Okay, good evening Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council Members. We've provided you a lengthy written report that provides significant detail. I'm gonna focus on presenting the highlights that I think are of most interest. Certainly can answer any questions on things from the report you may want to delve into further. The first section of the report provides a mid-year general fund summary to compare to the same period last year. Overall, there was nothing too unexpected, and the variances were generally explainable and within expectations. The typical pattern of expenditures outpacing fairly significantly revenues during the first six months of the fiscal year due to revenue timing was occurred as expected. So revenues were up over 15 million compared to the same period of last year, but the primary drivers there were significant increase in development related revenues, which were project-driven and really can be sporadic. And there was also a one-time transfer back from the parking fund that occurred. and there was a slight overall increase in big for what we call our big four taxes. In terms of the expenditure side, year over year expenditures for this six-month period were actually down 9.5 million but it should be noted that operating expenditure categories were all up, but there was significantly lower amount for transfers that really drove the overall decline. Last year, during the first six months of the year, there was an 8.4 million dollar transfer for a property purchase, as well as transfers to the parking fund that were eliminated in this fiscal year. And there were also hired transfers to the infrastructure fund in the prior year. So, as mentioned, the overall difference between revenues and expenditures this year is significantly lower than last year, but a lot of that is driven by differences in sporadic or one-time revenue and one-time transfers. Bottom line, no alarming differences, we weren't expecting to see. In the most recent mid-year, excuse me, in the most recent year-end report, we started to provide some summary information on the enterprise funds since they are a significant part of the overall city budget. And so we continued this practice with this mid-year update. So there's a summary information for each one of the enterprise funds within the written report, and I'm not going to go through those tables one by one. But generally speaking, all enterprise funds were performing within expectations. Total revenue for all of the funds was around, nearly meeting or exceeding the 50% mid-year target. Operating expenses were within 50% or less of the pro-rated budget for all of those funds, and there's variable CIP spending that's just a normal course of business. So I'll shift back to the general fund for the important question of where we now think we may in the year compared to what we thought when we developed the budget. So in terms of overall estimated revenues, we are projecting to end the year within 0.4% of the total budget. There is some variability, as you can see, within the various categories. Big four taxes as a group are expected to nearly hit budget almost exactly. With some minor increased projections for property and sales tax offsetting some projected minor reductions in TOT and business tax. There is some fairly significant variability between what was expected this year related to one time major project revenues versus all the other non-major, what we consider not to be major project activity, which has been a lot higher this year. But overall, these greatly offset each other. And that overall category is actually very close to budget. To budget. Service fees and charges are also expected to exceed the budget fairly significantly driven by strong demand for a variety of community services programming. Expenditures overall are projected to come in 2% below budget with overall projected salary savings from vacancies and some projected contractual services savings being the primary factors within that. So focusing on the yellow highlighted line here that net year-to-date variance, you will recall the adopted budget forecasted a $2 million deficit prior to considering public benefit contribution. Our current projections are slightly improved, showing effectively breaking even, but you know, a $400,000 projected surplus. We've included a table in the report that will likely include going forward just to track kind of the receipt and usage, approved usage of one time public benefit contributions. So, so far to date, the council has previously approved earmarking $6.5 million for future one-time Council approved utilization. And if our projections for this year do come to pass, we would be recommending earmarking the $12.5 million received this year similarly. And then you can kind of see that, we've previously approved 11 million that's been utilized to effectively offset expenditures in prior years. And then you can kind of see the future schedule they're looking out. In terms of where we project our reserves to be based on this forecast at the end of the fiscal year and comparison to where we ended our last fiscal year. You can see because operating expenditures are expected to increase this year and the city has an adopted financial policy calling for an economic and contingency reserve of 40% of general fund operating expenditures. We'd anticipate increasing that reserve by 5.8 million and almost all of that would be effectively shifted from unassigned reserves. And as I mentioned, we would anticipate likely recommending yearing the 12.5 million public benefit contribution for future purposes. Healthy General Fund reserves and maintaining our vigilance and ensuring current ongoing last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the last one is the We've also updated the 10-year General Fund Financial Forecast. This forecast includes a variety of baseline inflationary growth factors for both revenues and expenditures based on historical data, economic indicators, and in some case expert projections from some of our outside sources. It also includes some known anomalies or unique factors outside of baseline assumptions, such as things like the estimated impacts of the one BH development, metro-related costs and reimbursements and assumptions for funding based on the current approved CIP plan. We do not incorporate assumptions for additional mid-year appropriations or future budget enhancements outside of some additional positions for Metro Station 2 that are incorporated into Fiscal Year 2627. Outside of this, we are currently assuming a status quo. So this slide just represents those kind of those baseline inflationary assumptions we've applied to the outer years of the forecast. The written report summarizes some additional considerations that have been factored into the forecast. I'm not gonna go through those. This slide represents the application of those inflationary and other adjustments to the general fund revenues over the next 10 years. As I always try to caveat, the only thing I will guarantee about this forecast is that it will not play out this way. All we can do is apply the assumptions and adjustments for the things we know about or have a reasonable feeling we can predict. There's a lot of uncertainty right now, given things going on at various levels in our nation and internationally, we'll consider to weigh information and trends that we see and incorporate them into the forecast moving forward. And of course, we can always model different assumptions moving forward as well. I am not going to walk through these year by year numbers. Similarly, this slide also applies those assumptions and adjustments to the expenditure, major categories, focusing on that yellow highlighted line, the net results line. You can see, well, if you had it in front of you, you would see that the forecast has slightly improved compared to what we last presented in the adopted budget. But you will see the similar trend of three years of fairly significant deficits being forecasted, the most significant of those being in 2627 and 2728. Just a little more information on that that the overall projected deficits through fiscal year 2829 effectively out five years have cumulatively decreased by about 23.7 million from what was presented in the adopted budget. That's the good news, the bad news is we still are showing deficits in those next few years of some significance. It's important we continue to align the cost of current operations with ongoing revenues and that one-time revenues Be relied upon for one-time costs We will continue to strategize with the city manager and the city council and take actions where possible to contain costs and Enhanced revenues where possible and consider any strategic use of reserves where appropriate We are in the process of developing the proposed budget for fiscal year 2526 and we'll be having further discussions with the City Council about these matters. This report also provides some detail on a variety of the efforts underway to identify and implement cost reductions and revenue enhancement opportunities. Last March, the Blue Ribbon Committee recommendations for revenue enhancement opportunities were presented to the council. At that same meeting, staff was directed to prepare strategies for reducing spending back to the council through the Audit and Finance Committee, and that occurred over the summer of 2024. staff has been working in conjunction with various ad hoc on this process. It revised and new, higher article, list of strategic priorities, goals and work plans was developed through the priority setting ad hoc in order to have more achievable, measurable and action-oriented set of priorities that could better inform the budget process. This was adopted by the Council on December 10, 24, and will be brought back again for further consideration prior to the budget. Community Assistance Grant Funding was analyzed by the Social Services ad hoc after the program had gone through some significant overhaul. The new approach results in a potential savings of $395,000 for fiscal year 2526 with some CAGF partners on a hiatus for the year. The overnight homeless outreach hotline and transport services were transitioned to the existing security contract with covered six for no additional cost providing a a one time savings of 0.9 million and avoided the need for a future enhancement. The ambassador program has been reviewed through the community security ad hoc and security sweeps of parking structures will be absorbed into existing private security contracts and the ambassador footprint is being reduced. These actions should help in offsetting expected inflationary cost increases in the final agreement that will be developed for council consideration. As previously discussed, in December, the City Council adopted an ordinance to disband the rent stabilization commission which had fulfilled its purpose. Additionally, you literally just approved the commission standardization ad hoc recommendation to merge the health and safety with the Human Relations Commission and you've also previously approved consolidating the design review and architectural commission. The city is focusing on capital improvement program costs using a zero-based budgeting approach for funds primarily supported by the general fund. And we're aiming to optimize expenditures and justify financial allocations through this process. Key priorities include essential maintenance to prolong the lifespan of facilities and infrastructure as well as analyzing CIP carryovers to better align funding with project timelines for potential short term savings. Looking ahead, the city plans to present a full list of capital projects to the Council for prioritization based on available resources. And we're expecting this process more likely to be aligned with the 2627 budget due to its complexity and timing constraints. The city is conducting a thorough review of its sponsored events to evaluate their value and cost effectiveness. In November, the Roe Dayo Drive Special Events holiday program committee convened to begin this assessment and to develop a framework for determining the types of events the city should host. The city manager is currently working with various departments to identify and assess potential expenditure reductions with the aim to incorporate some of these findings into the proposed budget and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the review the state of the insurance market and further explore JPA options. While this could yield cost savings, the benefits would not be realized until fiscal year 26, 27 at the earliest due to the timeline and application process. The review of business tax categories and calculations is one of 10 revenue enhancement opportunities that the Blue Ribbon Committee identified. A comparison with other local cities revealed that while many use gross receipts for all tax calculations, the city relies on payroll hours for some of our classifications. So, to explore the potential for revenue increases or other opportunities, the committee recommended hiring a consultant to analyze the city's business tax classifications, do you comparison to other agencies? Make recommendations for modernization. We'll be releasing that RFP in the near future. We're hoping to release that in the near future. Finally, the Community Services Department is currently evaluating fees for its adventure camp and other recreation programs to ensure the city recovers a significant portion of the costs associated with providing these services. So these actions are the preliminary steps taken to tackle these projected deficits. We will continue to seek further measures, refine strategies to maintain the city's long-term financial health while ensuring the preservation of essential services for the community. You survived, and I am through. Thank you very much. Is there anyone in Council Chambers would like to be heard on this matter? Not seeing anyone will go to any electronic means? We do not have any public comments. And no emails. Okay. I don't know. So are there any questions of staff by City Council Members starting with Council Member Wells-Messal do questions and comments. Thank you so much for this report. It's so thorough and I just appreciate it so much. There's so it's very clear and I really appreciate the breakout for all the different activities that have been happening and I want to thank all of the staff and the city manager and my fellow council members for all the work that's been, everybody's been doing collectively to improve the financial picture. It's nice to see that it feels like it's moving. that we have 26 and 27, 28 looming with those deficits of 17 and 20 million. But it looks really great. I have one question I'm trying to remember. When we did, we agreed to do the transfer in from the parking enterprise fund. Was that before we adopted the budget or after I can't remember? After. So that's an impact that was just transferring those funds over from that parking enterprise into general fund? Yes, that was a contributing factor to why that gap was a little less this year between. Okay. Well that's really my only question. I just want to thank you for this really thorough reporting for all the hard work for your department and making it so clear and easy to understand. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Mellon. I do want to thank you and your staff for a very thorough report. It's long and you have to get through it but there's a lot of information there and when you're parsed out it's very good. So thank you. I have a question. It's really No, it's I don't know if you can if you can tell us but the sales tax revenues Can you break those down by category or is that not something that you can do so? I'm curious because you read in Wall Street Journal about a financial about a worldwide downturn in the luxury goods market for. And yet, our sales taxes are up. So I'm curious, are we not seeing that decline luxury goods, or are there other goods that are taking up the slide? So first of all, we do post, we have non-confidential quarterly reports that we post and I'd be happy to send the most recent one out to the City Council. It is on our what finance website as well. And that does give you breakdown by categories where at the level we can discuss sales tax without, you know, breaching confidentiality. At At this point we have not seen the downturn in the luxury area hit us directly. I will point out that a reason we're up a bit this year is we got some prior year payments that finally came through so that helped kind of boost things a little bit. But we haven't we haven't really seen, there's been some lag in auto. Auto has been affected, but so far our retail has held. OK. Well, that's good. I mean, the numbers are certainly there. I was just curious what was behind the numbers, that's all. The only other thing I would say, and I know John is going to beat a dead horse, so I'm going to take a whack at the beast myself first. Next study, an impact piece. And I think that that is a way we can generate some additional revenue to the city because we are incurring additional expenses as we bring more housing online. So I do think we've talked about it a lot. I do think the time has come that we do something along those lines, especially with all the housing we saw earlier that's in the pipeline. So I would just say that that's something I think we definitely need to get going on. That's it. Thanks. Yeah, and that was part of our priority setting exercise. And we're teaming it up for this next year to bring somebody on to do the work related to that. Okay, Council Member Schwanckson. I would just say I wouldn't wait till next year. I think we need to also consider as I've suggested before. Be interesting to get a report from you if we were to become a charter city, what other potential sources of revenue could we have? You worked at a charter city, correct? Covers City is a charter city. Correct. And I mean, again, not that we're going to necessarily need to do it, but utility tax is something that do they have that in the call for city? It did, yes. And do they have documentary transfer tax? They passed one in the last few years after I left, yes. So I think we have the ability to have sources of revenue. And you can, from what I understand, is when there are projects like One Beverly Hills, documentary transfer taxes can be done in a progressive way as well. So that it's, you know, over $10 million, it's this, if it's over 20 it's that and the and the other and I think there's a lot of flexibility there in addition to which as said we'd have the flexibility of running our own elections and deciding when we want to have them not dependent on the state that would be an advantage but I think really if we're looking at the financial situation we should look at what the potential advantages of of becoming a charter city would be. Becoming a charter city also allows us in theory to have more home rule, more more control over certain things and really the people need to vote on it, but as I recall Larry saying A charter itself could simply be the existing rules, you know, I could basically be saying that we have exactly what we have now and that's the charter and it can then take effect. So I would look at that, but I wouldn't wait for next study because the thing also is is that what we probably haven't considered here is the additional costs that the additional housing and additional residents and additional services that we need to provide an additional infrastructure are going to cost us. And that's exactly what an exit study does. It shows us what it's going to cost us and it presumably allows those who are creating the incremental costs to have to actually step up and pay for it. So I think that is extremely important and as said, would not wait, but also we could look at other potential directly related taxes. I know I mentioned before a view tax or a height tax or certain things that certainly would be most impactful for some of these new luxury products that are coming and that where you're going to definitely have people demanding those services. So thank you for the report and I really hope that we can move forward on some of these pursuing some of these solutions. Thank you, Vice Mayor Nazarian. Yes, thank you very much for the report, very thorough. I agree with a transfer tax. I think that that would be an easy win for the city. It's just a second time around. A couple of things for the cost reduction that were not mentioned, but I think that they were pretty significant. So we may want to include it. One of them was the holiday tower. And that was $750,000 that was deducted from what we would normally spend on it. So I think that that was pretty significant. And you mentioned that you're going to be looking at costs for services that are being provided. So for example, something that came up by many residents, when there was the pickleball conversation, was that non-residents should be paying a little bit more than residents for those services. And then that way it would open it up for more Beverly Hills residents to be able to utilize the services. So I don't know if that's something that would work, if it's in, this is the space for it for that conversation. So non-residents currently pay 25% more. I believe I'm looking at, I don't see anybody out there. I believe non-residents pay 25% more for tennis and pickle ball. We are taking a look at should it be 30% more, you know, just to run the numbers and see what that would look like. Yeah, I'm not here to say what the numbers should look like. I mean, should be, but it's just something to look at. Additionally, I'm hoping that we get some additional revenue from OpenBH because that's an area where we did not have resource, you know, any revenue coming in. Jeff Prang recently sent out some information about the property values that have increased in Beverly Hills. Can you speak to that? Yes, so the assess valuation for this fiscal year went up 4.1%. We had projected 3.5, so it was slightly more than, you know, we had, we tried an error on the side of being conservative. And I love that, that you do that. Thank you. Now, I know that we have, can we move more of our own money into the sweep accounts to gain higher interest? We actively manage our portfolio and conjunction with the city treasurer and our investment advisor. And we use like a money market or a saving account? We use a variety of permissible investments. We purchase agencies. We purchase agencies. We purchase corporate bonds. We do have money in money markets. We have the state pool. So yes, we try to ensure we maintain adequate liquidity, but we can get return on our idle cash. And on page seven it says that there was a $141,000 grant that we had to return. Well that's what it says. Yeah. So there was there was federal COVID funding that was passed through the state for water and waste water or rarages for customers that were having difficulty paying their bills during a defined period of time. We applied for that money. We got about $1.2 million based on what we requested. The timing between when you applied for the money and when you got the money and applied it to customer accounts during that time, you know, some customers had paid. So there was just, we applied over a million dollars of that grant funding. So we did return the balance, which was about $141,000. But we kept some of it? We kept over a lot of, do we have a lot of vacant units at this time or vacantly space, yes. We don't have a lot of vacant space, however. We do have the former right aid space, which is vacant, and that is one of our larger retail spaces, generally, and the former Wolfgang stay-house, that is also a vacant space that has been vacant for many years, although we've been working with the real estate ad hoc committee on several proposals that we've been considering. The same is true for the right-aid space. It's unfortunately a lengthy back and forth process with the different proposals that we have received. We are actively trying to get those spaces occupied, but because they're large spaces, it adversely affects our overall square footage, but when you look at our quantity of spaces, the vast majority of our spaces are leased up. Right, it's just that those are two very large areas, and perhaps we may wanna look at the right-age site see if we want to split it up into two. It has the space, it has the location and it has the ground floor coverage and I don't know if it has to be one piece but. We've come up with our own concepts for breaking it up. We've also entertained a few proposals that break it up and don't take the whole space. I think we're pretty close, hopefully, with something that we can bring forward to the full council. And we remain open to proposals from people who are interested. All right, thank you. And then with regard to our solid waste fund, I know that we're looking at anticipate future needs of the solid waste enterprise to comply with several refuse and recycling new laws. And I'm really hoping that that will not make too big of an impact due to the changes that we're going to have to make. So we're actively working with public works and the city's consultant on the next rate evaluation cycle. And then the storm water fund, we kind of touched on it. But what are the regulatory constraints? And you know, it's 2.5 million transfer that we need to do. And why do we not charge for this? Is there a way that we could start looking at charging for it? It's on page 11 of 24. There's so the- I know it requires a vote, but if there's a way to, Shana, perhaps your team with finance could look at if there's something that we need to do. If it's necessary to bring to a vote or if it's something that is impacting the community, I would recommend looking at that because it is a significant amount. I do know, I don't know how long ago it was, but I do know that previously we did do some informal polling with the community to see whether there would be support for an increase to that and at least at that time it appeared to be a resounding no and so we did not pursue it further. We could certainly reconsider it but that was the result that we received last time. I don't know if anybody would vote to be taxed more but- That is the challenge yes. All right, those are my questions. Thank you very much. It's a very thorough report and I'm grateful that we're able to do this mid-year as well as the end of the year. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, although thank you all very much, Jeff, although you get the credit and the detriment of the work that's done, I want to acknowledge Tatiana Swarinsky and Brandy Gross for the work that they do. Getting you to be able to give a comprehensive report as you did. You really did cover everything in your report. There was one question I had. Oh, in terms of projection for the assess valuation for the coming year, has that come out yet from the County assessor's office? They don't provide a projection until we near the summer. Okay. We have a projection from, I believe, what's reflected in the percentage assumptions is the projection we have from our consultant, HDL. So right now, yeah, that assumption for next year is actually 5.8%. And that's inflated by a large transaction that happened last year where a large property in the city reassessed. And then the other comment I have and we have a meeting coming up is we have an insurance meeting coming up. And the question as you mentioned of a joint powers agreement is going to come up again and we will discuss it again and see where it goes. I don't know, I'm sure the insurance market is gonna be tighter than it was a year before and we may lose the ability to have layers of insurance, but will it- Student powers agreements. Insurance coverage. For insurance coverage. Although that several accents are going to come off the books, I think, yeah, at least. And that may help. Yeah. So anyway, more to come on that. Yes. I appreciate you acknowledging my very hardworking staff. And we also have Jim Bernier, who's one of our budget and finance analysts here tonight. So thank you to him as well. We're sitting in front. So. All right. Okay, very good. So unless there's any other questions. Thank you very much and we will go on to Our next I am boy, they just keep coming proposed city employee police officer referral incentive program and Looks like we have a report from our chief of police Good evening Honorable Mayor. and the Council of Council and Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of Council of and get to our full staffing, which is difficult, finding enough candidates and finding candidates that fit the bill for Beverly Hills, but also in terms of giving credit where credit is due, this idea came from Captain Myers, and he did all the staff work around it and got it through the system. So I thought it was also a good kudos to him to have him present his project. Thank you. Teach you to come up with good ideas. Thanks Chief. Good evening. Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council Members. As the Chief stated, my name is Andrew Myers. I'm currently acting police captain, and I oversee the field services division. I want to thank you for this opportunity to present the proposed police officer referral incentive program. So the goal of this program is obviously to for recruitment efforts. This program has designed for three initiatives. So to increase our city employees engagement, we want to strengthen our recruitment efforts by leveraging one of our greatest assets and that's our city employees. I think it's an opportunity for empowering and encouraging our dedicated city employees to take an active role in shaping the future of our police department. This program is also designed to recruit quality. Our city employees already understand the Beverly Hills high standards and values. Referrals from our trusted employees increase new hires quality and success rate. And lastly, the Beverly Hills police department continues our commitment to recruit and retain highly qualified police officers. And lastly, this incentive program will strengthen our public safety readiness, as you all have aware. We look ahead to the increasing demands, including the Metro Expansion, the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the 2028 World Olympic Games. We must be proactive in our hiring strategies to ensure our department is fully staffed and prepared. The Human Resources Department will administer this program and will be available until June 30th of 2028. The program can be modified or discontinued as necessary. The fiscal responsibility, this program, the estimated cost is approximately 200,000 over three fiscal years funded entirely through equity sharing funds. There's no additional funding required and the city retains discretion to modify, suspend or terminate this program. This program is not just an incentive but an investment in Beverly Hills safety and security. So the incentive structure is as follows. For Lado police officers who are officers who already have their post certificate and work at an agency in Southern California or even Northern California. So they would receive $2,500 upon successful hiring and that's completing the background check. And then after their one-year probation the employee would receive the second half 2,500 for the 5,000 incentive and then for entry level that's someone who has to go to the Academy so the breakdown is a thousand dollars upon hiring 1500 upon the Academy, which is approximately six months, and then the final payment is $2,500 upon successful completion of probation. These structured payouts ensure our candidates meet key milestones before full incentive disbursement. So we're going to talk about eligibility and exclusions to maintain fairness and integrity. This program includes the necessary safeguards. So all full-time and part-time city employees are eligible except for executive group and police management association members. Employees directly involved in the recruitment events or evaluation process do not qualify for incentives. So recruitment events are if we went to LA fitness and our officers were strictly there to recruit. They could not be eligible if we were to be introduced or an applicant from that event were to apply that person, that the officer that's working is part of a recruitment team so they couldn't be on the application. And then the evaluation process part of that is our background investigators who obviously are doing the complete and thorough background would not qualify to be listed on the application. Then the referring employee cannot supervise or evaluate the candidates, so that would go towards our FTO program, our FTOs if they were to refer someone, they couldn't be their FTO during the field training program. They'd have to be assigned to somebody else. Same as the supervisor, the supervisor could not oversee their trading program. Only one referring to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be city employee's name, and they would get the credit. And then employees may refer multiple candidates, so that would increase the hiring opportunities. Implementing these measures ensures accountability while maximizing participation across all eligible city employees. So the recommendation is that staff recommends the city council approve the police officer refer on the senate program to support hiring goals, engage city employees and strengthen public safety. I look forward to working together to attract and retain the best police officers for the city Beverly Hills And I welcome any questions you may have. Is there anyone in the council chamber who would like to be heard on this matter? Not seeing any, we'll go to any electronic means. We do not have any public comment on this item. And any who, no emails and we will go to questions and comments of City Council member starting with Councillor Marlowe. Thank you so much for putting the together. I really appreciate it. I have one question. You mentioned in terms of where the referrals the candidates may come from and you mentioned Northern California. Do you get many candidates from Northern California? I thought it was more local. We. The lateral are new recruits. We've had a handful. Palo Alto, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, so we get a few. Well, I think this is a great program, so I can't see anything wrong with it at all. I think it's, it'll be interesting to see if you get any, if you get repeat referrals that are successful by anybody within the city, I think that will be interesting to see as well. Who's a great natural recruiter? We could have some hidden talents out there. Thank you. I think it's great. Council Member Corbyn. Thank you. Yes, Captain Mars. Thank you for bringing this to our attention for the report tonight a few questions First of all we talked about $2,500 upon successful completion of probation. So how long is the probation period normally? So for it's a good question. So for the lateral applicant It's their first year So they would get hired and they would go into field training and then they would have an anniversary date And so one year later would be their probation The entry level they get hired their probation generally already Manically starts when they go to the academy so they're technically on probation during the academy for six months and Then they come out of the academy and then they go into field training which is another six months and then they have another six months where they are able to perform on their own so it's a total of 18 months for entry level. So that's 18 months probationary for the entry level and that starts when they enter the academy? Enter the academy correct. And the academy six months? Correct. Okay so basically year after they come out of the academy? Enter the academy, correct. And the academy's six months? Correct. So it's basically year after they come out of the academy. Correct. Okay, great. So do other police departments in our in the area have this kind of program? Yes, they do. The Los Angeles Police Department offers a $2,000 incentive. The Whittier Police Department offers the same $2,000. The Gunet Beach is like 2 is like 2000 or 2500. So there are many agencies that do participate in this type of program. So we're obviously talking about offering a little more than that. I mean, to what extent is the money going to be important? And the reason I'm asking is because I can conceive of maybe, I mean, it's $5,000, I was going to do it. I'm trying to get an idea or do it with more money, be more effective. You tell me. I think this is a good launching point, a good starting point. It's significantly more as you pointed out that other agencies. And this is what we can incur as our police department. as I said earlier, we'd get it from our equity sharing plan. So it's a comfortable place to start, and we'll see how it progresses. And if we can reevaluate, and the City Council would like to offer an increase in our operating budget, then we'll be happy to visit that. I mean, obviously, you know, you're recruiting qualified candidates as top of mind for all of us. And... and increase in our operating budget, then we're happy to visit that. I mean, obviously, you know, you're recruiting qualified candidates as top of mind for all of us. And so, I mean, if someone were to say, this is a great starting program, we can start with it. But if someone were to come back and say, you know, if we gave them their $2500, or even their $5,000 for recruiting people who are here, say four years down the line, not just one year or two years. You know, it's a little, some incentive to keep them around to make sure that people are coming through not only qualified and a good fit. But if they stay, and they stay for a long period of time, maybe that's another incentive. Again, good starting starting point but I'd be open if there are other conditions or terms that would be even better for us and make us more competitive, I'd be open to consider that too. Thank you. Councillor Mirich. Is there a cap on how much one person can get from the referrals. So if we had a city employee that was good at recruiting as council member, while also saying they had cousins and a neighbor and a former friend or a college, you know, fraternity brother or somebody from, they knew in college, they could be three, four, five people that they would qualify for. So how do we avoid then the potential for nepotism? I wouldn't know that they were actually working for them or they'd be working for them or they would be family members. So that would all be vetted too through HR and through the background investigation. I mean, isn't there, in other words, if too many family members are in the department, isn't there the potential for cleaks or for something that maybe that we don't want to necessarily have it to be too clubby? I don't know, that would be something I could look at. I could reach out to my other agencies that I've asked to help prepare this. If they have that type of issue, but again, I think HR would definitely come into play and have their position and there's certain regulations that the employees would sign to avoid that napotism. Okay, thank you so much, I appreciate it. Vice-President Serran. Yes, thank you very much. I think it's a great program. I think it's going to bring a lot of new recruits. The only thing that I would say is I was speaking to some officers and they said, you have the best police department. I said, I know. But they said, you all get paid more than their departments do. But it's very difficult for someone to transfer over once they've been a part of a different department for nine years, six years, seven years. Because at that point, they've already established their pension and there's some of them, there's the reciprocity, but it's like, there's that seniority level that they're gonna be missing out on. So, I'm in support of this. The only thing that I would recommend is trying to get recruits while when they're fresh, right, when they're starting out. And I know that that's something that's done by going to the academies and trying to get the top of the class. And they're recognizing that, too, by the way, about Beverly Hills. But just to get them at the earliest level so that they are going to stay with us. Yeah, it's a challenge. Many agencies are experiencing, like you pointed out, that seniority, not having to work nights, weekends, they have their vacation and sick time built up and they lose that. And they start all over again. So when really they could be almost ready to go into another assignment and they have to come back to patrol and work patrol again. Holidays, weekends, it's all important to everybody. Yes, they almost said that I wish I could transfer over now but because I've already become established in the current space even though I would make more, I would lose other benefits. So I think this is a great program and, you know, strike them early. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for starting. Thank you. Just a couple of questions or comments. On the example that you gave us where two names were put on, I think you said a father and a son or something like that, who referred. There would only be one person that would get the bonus. Was there any thought to whether or not in a situation similar to that that they would split the bonus? I mean, that would probably be an agreement that the two people on the family members would agree to off the application. HR would just identify who is going to be the primary recipient and if they agree to share the money, then that's on them. And it may or may not ever happen, but then there would be tax consequences that they'd have to work out. So I know it just may be something to think about or not. It's in terms of an individual who is hired and I don't remember this is there a bonus program for that actual individual who joins the force? That's correct. So entry-level officers are currently receiving a $15,000 bonus for entry-level. the police officer themselves and the lateral officer is currently $20,000 signing bonus. Okay, and is there a gross budgeted amount where at some point that would run out that we don't have those funds or is that pretty rich still? I don't know. I could look into that and possibly survive. As far as I'm aware, we have been within the budgeted amount and we certainly are interested in hiring really qualified great candidates and so we would come to you if we needed more funding for the program. Yeah, and I think it's very important because I know other departments in the area have programs like that, and we certainly need to remain competitive in attracting people. So yeah, I'm supportive of the program. Thank you for coming up with the idea. I think it's a good idea. It's just another outlet. No matter what, it does cost the city to do recruitment, one way or the other. And this is just another way to have recruited, recruitments without necessarily paying for the operating cost, but just paying for the actual result. Could I ask one more question, please? No, yes. What is the duration that they need to stay on the force? Is there any form of guarantee? There is not at this time for the actual employee, the police officer that's being hired. This is an incentive to encourage our city employees to recruit for us. Okay, may I make a motion? A lot of questions today. I'm asking you if you want me to make a motion. Go ahead and we'll entertain a motion. All right. I move to approve the Police Department referral incentive program. I'll second it. And can we have the role please? Council member Wells? Yes. Council member Korman. Yes. Council member Marish. Yes. Vice Mayor Nazarian. Yes. And Mayor Friedman. Yes. Thank you. Good. Thank you. I appreciate your support. Thank you. I'm going to stop this right. Okay. So we will. We will. We will go on to our next item G. for report from the city attorney on close session items. There was nothing to report this evening. And report from the city manager. So no formal report this evening mayor. I know tonight is your last regular city council meeting and so I just wanted to say how much we admired you this year the amazing and meaningful initiatives that you had everything from the big mayor summit on anti-semitism to all the education opportunities with less is more and the post social media posts highlighting staff and the things that they do. For me, you've been a wise council this year, a calm hand. I have no idea how you juggle your life. I think there must be a couple of lusters running around with your mayor responsibilities, your professional responsibilities, your family that I know you, a door and your UCLA responsibilities. And so I admire that greatly. Your person of great integrity and we just appreciate all, I think on behalf of all the staff, all of the hard work and Great impact you've had on the city this past year Thank you very much appreciate it It's been an absolute pleasure working and being the mayor and working with everybody on the day is here It's really been a productive year for us and I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the help and support that I've gotten from everybody on the day. I save the rest of the comments. Please for the next meeting when we get to swear in our new mayor. Okay, we'll go to City Council Member and Committee Reports and comments starting with Council Member Wells Wells Okay, thank you. I'll try and be quick Tuesday March the fifth actually must have been Wednesday March the fifth We had a rodeo drive X Tuesday March the fifth we had a rodeo drive committee meeting With the board so that was fun for mayor Lester Friedman and I to attend and to see the Broad day O drive committee board before the change over for April 1st. We also had a meeting with the Broad day O drive committee because they're going through the RFP process for the holiday lighting program as well as for the concourse for Father's Day and other events for the city. So that was another meeting that we had to interview those candidates. And we had a real estate committee, liaison committee on March the 7th and as well as development agreement committee meeting to start talking about that for the projects that are coming up. And then lastly, we just had a RoJO drive committee meeting and special events to talk about a summer event that's exciting that will come to the council as well as a bit of a recap on the concourse and holiday program and looking at the program for this June for concourse. So, and that'll be coming to the council as well. And I would just like to say, Lester, I really appreciated this year with you as mayor. I can't imagine this year with anyone else as mayor, but you, I think you were the perfect mayor for this bringing this council together. I think really I think you've done a really amazing job and I agree very wise and it's just been really wonderful to have you at the helm for me personally. I would say during COVID having every phone line. I think we had three phone lines in my house at that time and all of us had cell phones and everyone was home because it was COVID so We all had our phones ringing and succession and the house phones and then our cell phones and I heard your voice and this is mayor lester Friedman And so for me, it's really fun to sit up here with the mayor lester Friedman So I just want to say thank you. It's really been full circle and I really appreciate it. So it's been fun. Councillor Herb-O'Courment. Thank you. Yes, the vice mayor and I had a couple meetings in the last couple of weeks. First we had a meeting of the policy manual at HUD Committee. It actually cut short a little bit when we discovered that there was a version of the draft policy manual that was not attached to the agenda. So that's going to come back very quickly. It was just an honest mistake. And then we also had a committee meeting that talked about trying to flesh out some more information about the MOU negotiation process. And we heard a little bit about the information we got got from we asked for at that meeting. It was given to us in close session today. So we've been councils aware of that information. And then lastly just want to thank you for being the fearless leader for this last year. And I will have more comments on April 1st, but thank you very much for your leadership and your kind words of wisdom throughout the year. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Mirish. Thank you. So last week I went to the annual National League of Cities congressional conference in Washington. Very interesting, always interesting to get to meet colleagues from around the country and here are similar issues that we have, which goes to show we are united, indeed, as a country. We talked about transportation, housing, preemption, all the usual stuff. The Vice President, JD Van spoke to the group and spoke about housing. It was kind of interesting on the one hand. He said that housing is getting out of control, the prices, and that people very correctly can't afford to own their own homes or the American dream the way they used to, and the problem he indicated zoning. But on the other hand, he did say that the American dream was single-family home. So how you reconcile that with the desire to eliminate single-family neighborhoods, he didn't quite discuss that. But he did say that he felt that the crackdown on immigration would help the demand side and would mean that fewer people would be competing for housing and that that might help the prices. So that was kind of my take away. I think it maybe is online. Also use the opportunity with the group. And also with our lobbyists to have meetings with congressional offices, including our own House Representative Ted Liu, Senator Spadilla and Shiff, and also Senator Federman's office. And I also had then the chance to go to meet with the DCM of the Israeli Embassy to discuss many of the things that we're all doing here and they're very appreciative and aware of everything that Beverly Hills does, including, and especially they're trying to focus on getting other cities to implement the IRA definition of anti-Semitism where we were the first city in the U.S. to do that over five years ago. Also, we'll note, maybe this is something that we should think about, in September, I think September's gonna be the 10 year anniversary of our cities, MOU with Israel. So that would certainly be something to celebrate among other things that we're going to do. So a few other things is I wanted to note that the, in case you hadn't seen it, that the State Department declared the South African Ambassador Abraham Rasul, a persona non-grata, meaning he has to leave this country, I think, by Friday. And the interesting thing is that would leave the Council General for Los Angeles, Th Thandel, Babawa, Sundusa, who is the consul general in Los Angeles, the highest ranking South African diplomat in the United States. Interestingly enough, she lives in Beverly Hills. But the sad thing is, is that along with Rasul, who had been out for his support for Islamism, for terrorism, for other things, for his anti-Israel attitudes and anti-Semitism. Sadly, the consul general here has not been much better. She, I believe in the last couple of months, accepted an award from care. The Council for American Islamic Relations, which has been designated by many people as a hate group, which has been constantly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. And so my hope would be that the State Department would take the same sort of, not kidding loves, but the same sort of measures with her that they took with the ambassador and declare her a persona non-grata as well. And I want to say that she is absolutely, in my opinion, anybody who is associating with care and hate groups like that is not welcome in our city. And I would hope the State Department gives her the boot as well. And hopefully then we can get South Africa, other people which sadly has been, it seems like on the take from either Iran or our friends in Qatar, being paid to go to groups like the ICJ and ICC to shill against Israel. And it is really disturbing and I just wanted to speak out against that. Furthermore, I would propose that we designate Qatar as a state sponsor of terrorism. that we sanction guitar, that we freeze Qatar assets and use them to compensate the victims of Qatar-funded terrorism. We see also now that Qatar, as they have done from October 8th, are continually blaming Israel for everything that's happening in the Middle East, that Qatar does not mention Hamas. Of course, they don't because they fund Hamas. Of course they don't because they are doing propaganda for Hamas with Al Jazeera. But it needs to be called out. And finally again, we know that the Qatar Council general, the consulate is in Beverly Hills. And I believe we should ask the State Department to expel them because supporters of terrorism and Jew-hating racists are simply not welcome in our city. And I would also like to add my thanks to Mayor Friedman for his service for the year, but of course he's still going to be mayor for a few more weeks. and we will have the opportunity to celebrate his year as mayor and his years on the council on April 1st and that's no joke. Thank you, John. My spirit is there, Ian. Yes. Mayor Friedman, I've thoroughly enjoyed working with you. I have a lot more to say on April 1st, but you're leaving very big shoes to fill. So we're not gonna let you off the hook this easily. You still have to serve until April 1st. That's okay, for sure. I also just wanted to give a few updates. We mentioned the community. We met with the Community Charitable Foundation with the Council Member Wells. I attended the EDC event and we had Chief Barton as the keynote speaker. He did a fantastic job letting us know about the security measures that our city is taking as it relates to fire and safety and keeping our residents safe. The woman's fire alliance also had an event on last Friday, I believe. The one in Malibu. And it was a great way to bring all of the brave, courageous, female leader firefighters together to just give them a day of relaxation after a lot of the hard work that they had done during the fires. Our community service department was showcased at the farmers market. They did a great job showcasing all the wonderful programs that they have and I enjoyed attending that. I went to the Firehang No Rouge event. They are one of our partners. It was at UCLA. It's one of the largest Noiroux celebrations and Noiroux is a holiday that's celebrated with over 300 million people across the world. And I'm grateful that we have our Noiroux table up here as well. I wanted to, as Council member Korman mentioned, we had our City Council Policy Manual ad hoc that unfortunately had to be rescheduled, but we also had a public safety agreement ad hoc and I had a delegation of young Jewish Federation leaders attend City Hall and they really enjoyed being able to come. I think it's really important that we cultivate young leaders being able to come to City Hall and attend. And I wanted to thank our staff and the City staff for the great job that they did during the marathon. Really, you would see the difference between Beverly Hills and other cities. I don't think the race was even completed and everything was already cleaned up and put away as if nothing happened. It was really pretty remarkable, so I wanted to give them a shout out. We had Beverly Hills community development and it was a great opportunity for us to share how we are having so many restrictions placed on us and how the state is imposing these enormous buildings that don't necessarily fit into various areas. So I think that it's a great opportunity for us to take any chance that we get, including the career day and a youth and government day that I also made sure to teach and educate our young people who hopefully will be our advocates to let them know that these These are necessarily decisions that council is making but rather state is imposing on us. I noticed that you took that as an opportunity. I sure did. I think that educating is really key. So Beverly Hills High School career day was wonderful. I was delighted to be able to give the opening remarks in Mayor Friedman's absence and I served on a panel with City Clerk who met and Magdalena and that was really exciting and great to learn more about some of our colleagues There's a performance going on at the wall is right now that's called here are blue berries. It's about the Holocaust and It's showing at the wall is for the next I believe, two and a half weeks from this point. And I really encourage everyone to go and see it. I want to wish a meaningful Ramadan to those who practice and also a happy no-roos. May it be a year filled with happiness,, health, peace and prosperity. So for those of you who only have one new year, we will share no ruse with you and it's a great opportunity if your new year's resolutions did not go through in January or you there already this is a great opportunity to start again and please visit visit all of the various Noirou's tables throughout the city. Shachataba, Noirou's Moabarak. Okay, thank you. Noirou's Peters, yes. So my theme for the beginning of this year, the initiatives was Beverly Hills together and we brought back the youth and government program as part of that. It had been done up through COVID and then during the COVID year we obviously didn't do it and just brought it back this year, did it a few days ago and everybody participated participated in it, and they did. They absolutely did. We got a very, very nice letter from the school district, from the principal, Drew Stewart, saying how excited the kids were to have participated in this, and that it gave them a real understanding of what's going on in government. Thanks everybody for participating in it, for staff. It's a really great program and I'm sure, going to put pressure on you, that you want to continue it. Also, I was unable to be at the high school career day because I was traveling with UCLA at the basketball tournament. Don't ask me what happened, but I did do a career day at Elro Day with the fourth and fifth graders. And the level of questions are much different at that level, but a lot of interest in it and a lot of good feelings for participating in that program too. So thank you all again for being there, helping me, being a part of a team. It's always been my way of approaching these things is a team effort and more to be heard again on the first. Before we, during the meeting, I wanted to take a moment to remember Susan Mischor, a long time resident of Beverly Hills who sadly passed away recently. At our last council meeting, council member Mirish gave some remarks about Susan's one of a kind personality and it was truly one of a kind as well as her incredible impact on his life. We extend our deepest condolences to Susan's family and friends during this difficult time. Susan is not just known as a former chairperson of the Recreation and Parks Commission, but she was a registered nurse who moved to our city from New York in 1973, was an active member of the League of Women Voters and instrumental in forming the nonprofit citizens for constitutional rights to support maintaining civic land over development. As a strong advocate of Beverly Hills, Susan was one of the first to focus on improving the signage at the parks for tourists and residents. Her strong dedication on the Recreation and Parks Commission from 2018 to 2023 exemplifies her commitment in making Beverly Hills a better place for all to enjoy. So if everyone could please join me in a moment of silence to honor the life of Susan Mischler. Thank you. So with that, we will adjourn this meeting to our next City Council meeting on April 1st, 2025, where we will have our City Council installation at the Wallace. So thank you and good night everyone.